%0 Journal Article
%K Energy efficiency
%K Buildings energy efficiency
%K Buildings
%K Energy use
%K EnergyPlus
%K Simulation research
%K External
%K Building Technology and Urban Systems Division
%K Building Technologies Department
%K Commercial Building Systems
%K Conservation measures
%K Retrofit Energy
%A Tianzhen Hong
%A Mary Ann Piette
%A Yixing Chen
%A Sang Hoon Lee
%A Sarah C Taylor-Lange
%A Rongpeng Zhang
%A Kaiyu Sun
%A Phillip N Price
%B Applied Energy
%D 2015
%R 10.1016/j.apenergy.2015.09.002
%T Commercial Building Energy Saver: An energy retrofit analysis toolkit
%V 159
%2 LBNL-1004502
%8 09/2015
%X <p>Small commercial buildings in the United States consume 47% of the total primary energy of the buildings sector. Retrofitting small and medium commercial buildings poses a huge challenge for owners because they usually lack the expertise and resources to identify and evaluate cost-effective energy retrofit strategies. This paper presents the Commercial Building Energy Saver (CBES), an energy retrofit analysis toolkit, which calculates the energy use of a building, identifies and evaluates retrofit measures in terms of energy savings, energy cost savings and payback. The CBES Toolkit includes a web app (APP) for end users and the CBES Application Programming Interface (API) for integrating CBES with other energy software tools. The toolkit provides a rich set of features including: (1) Energy Benchmarking providing an Energy Star score, (2) Load Shape Analysis to identify potential building operation improvements, (3) Preliminary Retrofit Analysis which uses a custom developed pre-simulated database and, (4) Detailed Retrofit Analysis which utilizes real-time EnergyPlus simulations. CBES includes 100 configurable energy conservation measures (ECMs) that encompass IAQ, technical performance and cost data, for assessing 7 different prototype buildings in 16 climate zones in California and 6 vintages. A case study of a small office building demonstrates the use of the toolkit for retrofit analysis. The development of CBES provides a new contribution to the field by providing a straightforward and uncomplicated decision making process for small and medium business owners, leveraging different levels of assessment dependent upon user background, preference and data availability.</p>