LBNL and its research partners are collaborating on a multiyear study to develop a database of end-use load profiles representing all major end uses, building types, and climate regions in the U.S. commercial and residential building stock.
End-use load profiles are critically important to understanding the time-sensitive value of energy efficiency, demand response, and other distributed energy resources. This foundational data set will help electric utilities, grid operators, manufacturers, government entities, and research organizations make critical decisions about prioritizing research and development, utility resource and distribution system planning, and state and local energy planning and regulation.
The team, which includes National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and Argonne National Laboratory, is using an innovative approach that benefits from the reach, cost-effectiveness, and granularity of data-driven and physics-based building stock modeling using the ResStock™ and ComStock™ capabilities developed by NREL for the U.S. Department of Energy. These stock models will be informed by and validated against the best-available ground-truth data—from submetering studies, statistical disaggregation of whole-building interval meter data, and other emerging data sources. The resulting public database will be generated using the stock models and will not contain the ground-truth data used to develop and calibrate the models.
A technical advisory group has been established to ensure that the direction and outcomes of the work are aligned with market needs. The technical advisory group includes roughly 50 representatives from organizations that are likely to use the resulting load profiles in their work, including utility companies, utility program implementers, grid operators, consultancies, research centers, state regulatory agencies, and regional energy efficiency organizations. Publicly available slides from our technical advisory group meetings are available here.