Lead Performer: National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) – Golden, CO
FY16 DOE Funding: $530,000
Project Term: Current – September 30, 2016
Funding Type: Direct Lab Funding

PROJECT OBJECTIVE

NREL will provide programming support for the Standard Energy Efficiency Data (SEED) PlatformTM, an open source software application that helps organizations easily manage energy performance data of large groups of buildings. NREL will also continue to develop BuildingSync, a standardized auditing language for commercial building energy data, developed by an NREL-led working group. NREL’s work on this project will include:

  • Developing and deploying an open source BuildingSync file validation application that includes validation with the BuildingSync schema and some contextual validation.
  • Deploying BuildingSync with federal agencies, municipalities, utilities, software providers, and ASHRAE, revising as necessary to support these partners.
  • Developing and deploying a continuous integration system for improved source code quality management.
  • Refactoring the source code for greater modularity to improve robustness, maintainability, extensibility, and usability by the extended development team and deployment organizations.
  • Prioritizing performance improvements identified by SEED users and the development team.
  • Integrating SEED into the larger BTO software environment, including the Commercial Building Asset Score.

PROJECT IMPACT

NREL’s work supporting SEED will help increase SEED’s performance, reliability, and value to prospective users, including utilities, municipalities, portfolio owners, third-party software developers, and others. Energy audits of commercial buildings are becoming increasingly common and even required in the federal sector and in cities like New York City and San Francisco. The lack of a standard data specification for information collected and reported, as well as the lack of consistency in data formats across audit software applications has hindered the progress of developing a national standard for commercial building energy audits. BuildingSync was developed to meet this need using the standard energy data terminology defined in the Building Energy Data Exchange Specification (BEDES).

CONTACTS

DOE Technology Manager: Cody Taylor
Lead Performer: Nicholas Long, National Renewable Energy Laboratory