Commercial Building Energy Saver

Commercial Building Energy Saver (CBES), intended use for small and medium office and retail buildings in California, provides energy benchmarking and three levels of retrofit analysis considering the project goal, data availability, and user experience. CBES offers prototype building models for seven building types, six vintages, in 16 California climate zones and roughly 100 energy conservation measures (ECMs) for lighting, envelope, equipment, HVAC, and service hot water retrofit upgrades. CBES Preliminary Retrofit Analysis utilizes the DEEP database, a data bank for screening and evaluating retrofit measures for commercial buildings generated from 10 million building energy simulations conducted using EnergyPlus and the U.S. National Energy Research Scientific Computing (NERSC) supercomputer. CBES Detailed Retrofit Analysis employs advanced automated calibration algorithms to attune inputs prior to simulating energy savings of ECMs. For the detailed retrofit analysis, on-demand energy simulations using OpenStudio and EnergyPlus calculates the energy performance of the building with user configurable ECMs. CBES is flexible enough that the user can jump to any level of evaluation, after the common inputs are provided. For those who wish to extend beyond California, a national version can be found at the 2030 whole building retrofit toolkit portal. CBES targets broad audience including building owners, facility managers, energy managers, building operators, energy auditors, designers, engineers and consultants. Recent new features include ECMs, PV, and battery to support ZNE buildings design and retrofits.