Comparative Review of Simplified Building Energy Analysis Tools for Retrofitting Existing US Buildings

Estimates of potential energy savings from selected energy efficiency measures (EEMs) typically require specialized expertise, time-intensive building audits, and detailed engineering analyses. To address this challenge, several simplified retrofit assessment toolkits have been developed worldwide; however, they lack the ability to identify the optimum retrofit package, calibrate energy models, are designed to serve users’ specific needs, and have different level of data requirements. In this paper, a comparative evaluation of four openly available simplified building retrofit assessment toolkits, developed in the US, is carried out using two well-defined prototypical buildings consisting of a place of worship and an office building. This assessment compares the results of toolkits with those obtained from the state-of-the-art whole-building energy simulation tool EnergyPlus to gauge the analysis prediction accuracies and modeling capabilities for the four simplified building retrofit assessment tools. The results of this analysis guide practitioners on selecting retrofit analysis tools that best fit their needs, available datasets, and required accuracy levels. Additionally, the tools were applied to real-life buildings with the recommended retrofit suggestions being discussed with building owners to gauge their practical deployment. This discussion led to the identification of future directions for retrofit tool developments.