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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.

Department of Energy's Building Technologies Office Releases EnergyPlus V. 8.1

November 4, 2013

November Special Focus: Energy Efficiency, Buildings and the Electric Grid

EnergyPlus is the Department of Energy's Building Technologies Office's free, open-source whole-building energy simulation engine. Developed by a diverse team of building physics researchers and mechanical engineers at the National Labs and various consultancies, EnergyPlus is the engine behind a large and growing number of tools for the design of energy-efficient buildings and their HVAC systems, for compliance with energy-efficiency codes and standards, and for building certification and rating through programs like USGBC's LEED and DOE's Commercial Building Energy Asset Score.

BTO has released an updated version of EnergyPlus with new features and enhancements, including:

Improved support for complex fenestration systems
Enhanced modeling of natural ventilation
A new comprehensive model for unitary (i.e., packaged, self-contained) HVAC systems
Many new HVAC system templates
New capabilities for modeling some types of faulty system operation

Pre-built installation packages are available for the Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux operating systems. Source code is available as well.

Learn more about EnergyPlus and the tools that use it.

Development of EnergyPlus is coordinated through the Simulation Research Group of Berkeley Lab's Environmental Energy Technologies Division.