About Us +
Researchers in the Building Technology & Urban Systems Division (BTUS) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory develop data and technologies that increase energy efficiency and improve the health, safety and comfort of building occupants, in the United States and worldwide.

We work closely with industry partners, academics and government officials to achieve these goals, and share our research widely
Research +
We are at the forefront of cutting-edge research that redefines building technology and explores all areas of urban systems.

We have been leaders for decades in developing energy-efficient windows, improving indoor air quality, coming up with new ideas to fix the nation's electricity grid, and so much more.

Visit our research areas at the right to find out more.
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Publications +
Enjoy presentations from Building Technology & Urban systems research experts on a wide variety of topics in the areas of building energy efficiency, the electricity grid and how it relates to buildings and much more.
- Presentations
News
Tools & Guides +
Explore our tools, guidebooks and software and download for free.

We offer a variety of technologies designed to simulate and model real-world circumstances to assist in energy-saving programs and help building owners build better buildings. These tools can help calculate performance of building systems like windows and shades, help consumers and builders pick the best windows for a variety of applications and much more.

Publications

Publications By Research Area

2022

Paul, Lazlo, Anand Prakash, Kun Zhang, Marco Pritoni, and Richard E. Brown."SolarPlus Optimizer: Integrated Control of Solar, Batteries, and Flexible Loads for Small Commercial Buildings."2022 ACEEE Summer Study on Energy Efficiency in Buildings (2022).

Zhang, Kun, David Blum, Hwakong Cheng, Gwelen Paliaga, Michael Wetter, and Jessica Granderson."Estimating ASHRAE Guideline 36 energy savings for multi-zone variable air volume systems using Spawn of EnergyPlus."Journal of Building Performance Simulation 15.2 (2022) 215 - 236. DOI

Wetter, Michael, Paul Ehrlich, Antoine Gautier, Milica Grahovac, Philip Haves, Jianjun Hu, Anand Prakash, Dave Robin, and Kun Zhang."OpenBuildingControl: Digitizing the control delivery from building energy modeling to specification, implementation and formal verification."Energy 238 (2022) 121501. DOI

2021

Wetter, Michael, Paul Ehrlich, Antoine Gautier, Milica Grahovac, Philip Haves, Jianjun Hu, and Kun Zhang."Open Building Control." (2021).

2020

Zhang, Kun, David Blum, Milica Grahovac, Jianjun Hu, Jessica Granderson, and Michael Wetter."Development and Verification of Control Sequences for Single- Zone Variable Air Volume System Based on ASHRAE Guideline 36."American Modelica Conference 2020 (2020). DOI

Pritoni, Marco, Anand Prakash, David Blum, Kun Zhang, Rui Tang, and Jessica Granderson."Advanced control sequences and FDD technology. Just shiny objects, or ready for scale?."ACEEE Summer Study 2020 (2020). DOI

Alstone, Peter, Richard E. Brown, Marco Pritoni, David Blum, Kun Zhang, and Anand Prakash."Resilient buildings for fire-adapted landscapes: EE and flexible loads integrated with solar and storage microgrids."ACEEE Summer Study 2020 (2020).

Prakash, Anand, Kun Zhang, Pranav Gupta, David Blum, Marc Marshall, Gabe Fierro, Peter Alstone, James Zoellic, Richard E. Brown, and Marco Pritoni."Solar+ Optimizer: A Model Predictive Control Optimization Platform for Grid Responsive Building Microgrids."Energies 13.12 (2020) 3093. DOI