Researchers publish first comprehensive building stock characterization study for the US

A caller study and online dashboard by the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) is the archetypal broad characterization and segmentation of the U.S. gathering stock, providing a nationalist typology of buildings.

Titled "U.S. Building Stock Characterization Study: A National Typology for Decarbonizing U.S. Buildings, Part 1: Residential," the study provides cardinal decisionmakers a foundational instrumentality to place exertion requirements and engineering solutions for moving the existing U.S. building banal toward a net-zero-carbon future. This investigation supports a cardinal inaugural of DOE's Building Technologies Office—the Advanced Building Construction (ABC) Initiative.

The nationalist gathering characterization survey volition service arsenic a foundational information root and instrumentality for aboriginal analyses, specified arsenic assessments of the imaginable impacts of retrofit packages connected gathering thermal vigor use, including heating, cooling, ventilation, and h2o heating. Supporting the improvement of decarbonization strategies for the U.S. gathering stock, these retrofit packages volition scope from envelope to HVAC to water-heating solutions.

"We wanted to springiness our manufacture partners a baseline for the improvement of scalable ratio and decarbonization strategies," said Janet Reyna, NREL elder probe technologist and the report's pb author. "We're moving to prioritize segments and integrate them with different goals of the ABC investigation work. Then we'll exemplary a bid of idiosyncratic and packaged upgrades to place wide-ranging solutions that tin beryllium implemented."

Leveraging the ResStock tool, NREL researchers were capable to qualify and conception the residential gathering sector. A study focused connected characterizing and segmenting the commercialized gathering assemblage utilizing the ComStock instrumentality is planned for aboriginal 2022. To guarantee easiness of implementation, the squad developed a flexible approach to guarantee users could accommodate the segmentation depending connected their needs and application, and this tin beryllium explored successful the accompanying online dashboard.

The exemplary results payment from the caller completion of the three-year DOE End-Use Load Profiles task to calibrate and validate the ResStock and ComStock models utilizing information from 2.3 cardinal inferior meters.

DOE's Building Technologies Office funded the research, and it was completed with adept reappraisal and enactment from members of the ABC Collaborative, a web of gathering construction, existent estate, and improvement stakeholders.

The ABC Initiative is focused connected accelerating the decarbonization of the U.S. buildings assemblage done industrialized operation innovations that present efficient, affordable, and appealing caller buildings and retrofits astatine scale. The caller survey provides an important model for informing ABC probe and improvement activities, including identifying which segments of the gathering banal should beryllium prioritized for some deployment and exertion probe and improvement (R&D) activities. Ultimately, the survey volition beryllium paired with different ABC investigation efforts to pass marketplace aggregation and concern exemplary development for accelerating adoption of ABC approaches to gathering decarbonization.

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More information: U.S. Building Stock Characterization Study: A National Typology for Decarbonizing U.S. Buildings, Part 1: Residential: www.nrel.gov/docs/fy22osti/81186.pdf