The U.S. Department of Energy developed a comprehensive suite of tools for accessing, managing, analyzing and sharing building energy data. This website describes how they can be used to support building performance standards (BPS) policies, one of many possible use cases.
Find Your Tool or Workflow
Mouse over and click on the tools below to get more information.
When you're ready, follow the 'Learn More' button to see just how easy data can be.
GOALS & OUTCOMES
DATA COLLECTION & REPORTING
Building owners use ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager to report their energy use. This information reveals how efficiently a building is being operated.
Portfolio Manager also generates an ENERGY STAR Score, a number from 0-100 which many cities use to set their performance targets and prioritize buildings for upgrade.
Audit Template is an online portal which cities use to collect standardized information – no more wrestling with Excel files or proprietary formats – about a building's physical systems and recommended upgrades.
Auditors use the mobile-friendly interface to submit data.
MANAGEMENT & COMPLIANCE
The SEED Platform is a central database for city BEPS data. It merges information from Portfolio Manager, Audit Template, and other city datasets in one place, behind one intuitive interface.
With just a few clicks, your city can:
- Merge datasets
- Assess the completeness of audit reports
- Perform automated quality assurance
- Share data with third parties
- Track the progress for BEPS compliance
- Leverage DOE's analysis & evaluation tools to identify upgrade opportunities within buildings and across the city's building stock, assess the performance of the BEPS program, and set program cycle goals.
- Share data with CRM systems & dashboards
Because SEED automates so many manual, time-intensive processes, even cities with severely limited resources and staff and use SEED to achieve their program goals.
ANALYSIS & EVALUATION
Use the ResStock and ComStock analysis tools to identify which building stock improvements save the most energy and money.
By combining large public and private data sources, statistical sampling, detailed sub-hourly building simulations, and high-performance computing, these two tools achieve unprecedented granularity and accuracy in modeling the U.S. building stock.
The BETTER tool converts readily-available monthly energy consumption data (like that collected by ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager and shared with SEED) into specific, cost-effective recommendations for energy efficiency upgrade measures.
It allows the precise targeting of efficiency improvements in one or many buildings.
BETTER doesn't replace an audit, but it does provide a preliminary estimate of the size and make-up of potential energy efficiency projects.
The Asset Score tool assesses the energy efficiency of a building's physical systems and produces an Energy Asset Score Report.
Use Asset Score to identify cost-effective energy efficiency measures to help buildings meet EUI and GHGe goals for compliance with your jurisdiction's BPS policy.
Whether you want to notify building owners of their compliance using Customer Relationship Management (CRM) programs, pipe data into a public dashboard, access data from the DOE Building Performance Database (BPD), or take advantage of other tools, there's a way to do it.
Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) can make ready use of the BuildingSync file format used by Audit Template, SEED, and Asset Score.