PNNL

Abstract

The U.S. Building Energy Asset Score is intended to help owners, operators, and tenants quickly gain insight into the current and potential efficiency of their building systems (envelope, electrical and mechanical systems). A robust and easy-to-understand 10-point scoring system was developed to facilitate an unbiased comparison of similar type buildings across the country. Asset Score does not rely on a database approach or specific building baselines to establish a rating. Rather, energy use distributions of various use types were constructed using Latin Hypercube sampling and further converted into a series of stepped linear scales to score buildings. A score is calculated based on the modelled energy use intensity after adjusting for climate difference. This paper describes the methodology used to perform several hundred of thousands of building simulation runs and develop the 10-point scoring scales, which are consistent among building types and effective for both low-efficiency and high-performance buildings. Results from a pilot test on over 500 buildings are also discussed.