Buildings Data and Tools
NREL offers data and tools to help consumers, manufacturers, researchers, and utilities construct energy-efficient and cost-effective buildings.
These resources include standardized product data and findings, whole building simulation programs, machine-learning software models, and capabilities to help users identify ways to improve energy efficiency and make the grid more efficient, resilient, and reliable.
BEopt
The Building Energy Optimization (BEopt™) tool evaluates single-family detached and multifamily building designs and identifies the most cost-effective whole-house efficiency packages to achieve zero energy. The tool analyzes new construction and existing home retrofits, evaluating single building designs, parametric sweeps, and cost-based optimizations.
BESTEST-EX
BESTEST-EX is a test procedure that allows software developers to evaluate their audit tools' performance in modeling energy use and savings in existing homes when utility bills are available for model calibration. The NREL Buildings Research team developed BESTEST-EX to support the larger effort of assessing and improving the accuracy of energy analysis for residential buildings.
BuildingSync
BuildingSync® is a standardized data format for building energy audits that simplifies sharing, comparing, and reusing data. The schema allows data to be more easily aggregated, compared, and exchanged between databases and software tools. It streamlines the energy audit process for energy auditors, software providers, building owners, utilities, and other implementors.
ComStock
The ComStock™ analysis tool is an NREL model of the U.S. commercial building stock. ComStock allows stakeholders of various technical inclinations to better understand how the commercial building stock in the U.S. uses energy and how various technologies and demand-side management strategies could change that energy use pattern in the future.
EnergyPlus
EnergyPlus® is the Building Technologies Office's state-of-the-art open-source building energy modeling (BEM) simulation engine. It provides the detailed and validated physics-based algorithms needed by building designers and researchers to accurately model whole-building system energy performance to inform integrated design, early-stage and advanced R&D, standards, policy, and investment decision-making. The EnergyPlus® simulation software provides a robust and reliable simulation engine that can be embedded inside critical workflows, ensuring it meets the requirements of researchers, designers, users, and policymakers.
foresee
foresee™ uses machine-learning algorithms, advanced data analytics, and physics-based modeling and simulation to derive data-driven appliance models and energy use patterns within a home and predict future energy consumption while coordinating the operation of connected appliances. This secure home automation system takes occupants' personal habits and priorities into account and automatically creates energy-saving scenarios homeowners can comfortably implement.
OpenStudio
The OpenStudio® platform is a collection of open-source software tools that brings together physics-based BEM, large-scale computing capabilities, and data science tools to enable a broad range of building energy analysis applications. The platform includes a software development kit for programmatic access to BEM engines including EnergyPlus®, support for scripting and workflow automation called OpenStudio Measures, prototype building models and standards-related model transformations via the OpenStudio Standards gem, and large-scale simulation analyses on local, cluster, and cloud resources via the OpenStudio Server.
ResStock
The ResStock™ analysis tool identifies which home improvements save the most energy and money for cities, states, municipalities, utilities, and manufacturers. This tool processes data from supercomputer simulations with a statistical model of housing stock characteristics as well as large public and private data sources.
SEED
The Standard Energy Efficiency Data (SEED) Platform™ is an open-source platform designed to manage building characteristics and performance data. The SEED Platform eliminates many technical and workflow challenges associated with collecting and managing performance data for large building portfolios. It helps users combine data from multiple sources, clean and validate it, and generate valuable reports. This allows users to implement building performance regulations or track the performance of their portfolios to increase energy efficiency.
Technology Performance Exchange
The Technology Performance Exchange™ provides consumers, manufacturers, vendors, modelers, researchers, and utilities standardized product data to facilitate and improve assessments and comparisons of building-related products. This is a centralized, web-based portal for finding and sharing information on cost-effective, energy-efficient technologies.
URBANopt
The URBANopt™ (Urban Renewable Building And Neighborhood optimization) advanced analytics platform supports the design and optimization of urban districts and helps plan the integration of high-efficiency, sustainable energy technologies community-wide.