Dear Friend of Building Science,

The latest issue of Recent Research from the Building Energy Analysis Group at Berkeley Lab describes a comparison of energy ratings of homes to their actual energy use. While this type of project is frequently undertaken in the BEA Group, this specific project sought to answer an almost naively simple question: how accurate are home energy ratings? The answer was, of course, more complicated than the question, but it's a good story. Jeff Ross Stein was able to make conclusions that should influence the direction of home energy rating systems. This project also demonstrates the value of collecting and compiling field data as well as the opportunities for combining datasets that were previously separate.

The details of Jeff Stein's project are available at our home page at http://eetd.lbl.gov/EA/Buildings/, which we invite you to visit. We are constantly adding and upgrading information available at the Building Energy Measurement and Performance Analysis home page. We expect the web site to soon become the primary repository of our reports and to contain the most current descriptions of group activities. We humbly suggest that you "bookmark" the site on your web browser.

Please contact me if you have any questions or comments.

Sincerely yours,

Return to "Accuracy of Home Energy Rating Systems."

Return to Recent Research index.