A framework for using calibrated campus-wide building energy models for continuous planning and greenhouse gas emissions reduction tracking

Physics-based building energy models, once calibrated to historic energy data, are increasingly used to explore energy efficiency retrofits. When utilized for large building portfolios, such as university campuses, these calibrated models require substantial initial effort to develop, but are then typically only used once for analyzing potential building upgrades and estimating carbon reduction opportunities. This paper presents a continuous energy performance planning and tracking system for a university campus that automatically updates and compares measured against simulated building energy use for a hundred campus buildings. The system archives historic data, enables exploration of potential upgrade scenarios, and allows for the documentation of energy retrofits to individual buildings. The objectives of this tracking system are to support facility managers to ensure that their buildings are performing as intended, financial administrators to quantify potential energy savings and payback times of building upgrades and the overall university community to track campus-wide carbon emissions from buildings vis-à-vis previously defined reduction targets. A proof-of-concept implementation is presented for the authors’ campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts.