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Energy Technologies Area (ETA) researchers are continually building on the strong scientific foundation we have developed over the past 50 years. We address the world’s most pressing climate challenges by bringing to market energy-efficient innovations across the buildings, transportation, and industrial sectors. ETA is at the forefront of developing better batteries for electric vehicles; improving the country's aging electrical grid and innovating distributed energy and storage solutions; developing grid-interactive, efficient buildings; and providing the most comprehensive market and data analysis worldwide for renewable technologies like wind and solar.
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The Energy Technologies Area (ETA) Strategic Plan is the guiding force for our research and development for the next ten years. It clearly charts a path toward clean-energy solutions and focuses on five detailed Strategic Initiatives. The Plan provides an in-depth look at how ETA is accelerating research to provide affordable, clean energy to all while accomplishing deep, economy-wide decarbonization, looking to avoid a rise in global average temperature while simultaneously developing solutions to increase humanity's resilience to extreme weather volatility.
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About Us +
The Energy Technologies Area (ETA) is unique in translating fundamental scientific discoveries into scalable technology adoption. Our approach combines an understanding of the marketplace and the role of state and federal regulation and policies. ETA's research drives real-world, practical results that affect and improve the everyday lives of Americans and those across the globe. Saving energy and battling the Climate Crisis are key to the foundation of our research, which is driven by technoeconomic analysis and in-lab experimentation and discovery.

Home Energy Saver and Home Energy Scoring Tool: Recent Papers and Application Programming Interfaces

August 8, 2012

The development team for EETD’s energy self-audit websites, Home Energy Saver and Home Energy Scoring Tool, has made four new papers available:

An in-depth assessment of Home Energy Saver calculation accuracy, along with a broader discussion of the issues and challenges in validating residential energy analysis tools. The bottom line is that—given high-quality inputs on both the physical characteristics and occupant behavior—HES is accurate within 1%, on average, over collections of dissimilar homes in diverse climates.

Get the Paper > Parker, D., E. Mills, L. Rainer, N.J. Bourassa, and G. Homan. 2012. "Accuracy of the Home Energy Saver Energy Calculation Methodology."
Debut of the new Home Energy Scoring Tool (and its accuracy), which EETD has developed for DOE in support of the just-launched national Home Energy Score Program. The team recently completed application programming interfaces (APIs) that enable qualified users to embed the scoring tool procedures into their own software.
Get the Paper > Bourassa, N.J., L.I. Rainer, E. Mills, and J. Glickman. 2012. "The Home Energy Scoring Tool: A Simplified Asset Rating for Single Family Homes."
A review of the team’s experience to-date creating web services and APIs for building energy models, with some very innovative examples of how people are using them in the marketplace. These services allow software developers to rapidly incorporate the back-end functionality of the Home Energy Saver consumer or professional tools, as well as the Home Energy Scoring Tool into their own tools. The team is now adding functionality for multifamily buildings, which you can read more about here.

Get the Paper > Mills, E. and P. Mathew. 2012. "Web Services that Foster Innovation in Buildings Energy Analysis Tools."
A review of the development team’s foray into social media, focusing on the launch and strong growth of the Home Energy Pros network for home performance professionals. We’re approaching 3000 members. Join the conversation!

Get the Paper > Chojnowski, D., K. Straub, E. Mills, and T. White. 2012. "Online Communities for Creating Change: Home Energy Pros."