New Construction EUI Database Tool

Southern California Edison’s (SCE’s) Codes and Standards team and Emerging Technologies team engaged kW Engineering and Big Ladder Software to develop a new construction benchmark database covering the most common building types for designers, builders, state and local governments, utilities, and building science experts. The Codes and Standards team’s primary goal during this project is to develop code baseline relative to the California climate zones, various Title 24 vintages, and various operating conditions. The Emerging Technologies team’s primary focus during this project is to develop new and novel approaches for determining appropriate baselines in the custom incentive programs. Overall, the purpose of this project is to develop a free, open-source and statewide database of building prototypes for: Informing energy design decisions, Providing a possible future compliance pathway for the CA Energy Code and local reach codes, and Applying for custom incentive programs and certifications. Programs that could benefit include those that use Title 24 code as their baseline, such as new construction or normal replacement.   The building prototypes represent new construction buildings following the standard designs outlined in the Nonresidential Alternative Calculation Methods (ACM) Reference Manual for the 2008, 2013, and 2016 Building Efficiency Standards. The database includes residential and non-residential prototype buildings with varying schedule profiles (short, average, and long) modeled in each of the 16 California climate zones to offer the user a wide range of benchmarked data. The database includes 4 residential building prototypes and 22 nonresidential building prototypes, all sourced from National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s (NREL’s) open source OpenStudio-Standards project. Additionally, three new commercial building prototypes were created to expand beyond the building types covered by the OpenStudio-Standards project. The commercial prototype models were developed with the EnergyPlus™ 8.9 engine and the residential prototype models were developed with the California Simulation Engine (CSE).