New Publication: Comparative Review of Simplified Building Energy Analysis Tools for Retrofitting Existing US Buildings

A research publication resulting from the BEST Center project titled “Development of Automated Electrification Retrofit Analysis Tool” led by Prof. Moncef Krarti, Dr. Phani Vadali, and Prof. Ashit Harode was recently published in the journal Energies. From the paper abstract:

Estimates of potential energy savings from selected energy efficiency measures (EEMs)
typically require specialized expertise, time-intensive building audits, and detailed engineering
analyses. To address this challenge, several simplified retrofit assessment toolkits
have been developed worldwide; however, they lack the ability to identify the optimum
retrofit package, calibrate energy models, are designed to serve users’ specific needs, and
have different level of data requirements. In this paper, a comparative evaluation of four
openly available simplified building retrofit assessment toolkits, developed in the US, is
carried out using two well-defined prototypical buildings consisting of a place of worship
and an office building. This assessment compares the results of toolkits with those obtained
from the state-of-the-art whole-building energy simulation tool EnergyPlus to gauge the
analysis prediction accuracies and modeling capabilities for the four simplified building
retrofit assessment tools. The results of this analysis guide practitioners on selecting retrofit
analysis tools that best fit their needs, available datasets, and required accuracy levels.
Additionally, the tools were applied to real-life buildings with the recommended retrofit
suggestions being discussed with building owners to gauge their practical deployment.
This discussion led to the identification of future directions for retrofit tool developments.