Research Themes +
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.
Strategic Initiatives +
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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For media inquiries,
please contact ETA
Interim Communications Manager
Kiran Julin

[email protected]
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.

Simergy: A Free, Comprehensive Graphical User Interface for Energy Modeling with EnergyPlus

July 23, 2013

The Environmental Energy Technologies Division (EETD) of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Buildings Technology Office of the Department of Energy announce the launch of Simergy, a free graphical user interface (GUI) that enables the whole-building energy modeling engine, EnergyPlus, to be used more easily and effectively. Simergy helps meet the building energy modeling needs of architects, mechanical engineers, energy analysts, and sustainability consultants to enable energy-efficient building design.

Simergy gives users access to the powerful modeling capabilities of EnergyPlus in an integrated energy-assessment workflow:

Support for multiple design alternatives.
Versatile geometry creation with 2-D and 3-D CAD import capabilities.
Libraries and templates of construction materials, default operating schedules, and HVAC equipment and templates for conventional and low-energy HVAC systems.
Drag-and-drop HVAC schematic editing that can be used to both customize standard templates and create innovative designs from scratch.
Customized summary reports and interactive visualization of simulation results at different levels of detail.

For more information on the capabilities of Simergy and EnergyPlus, please watch a series of video tutorials and explore the guides, samples, and FAQs available on the Simergy website.

About Simergy

Simergy is funded by a private-public partnership between the Building Technologies Office (DOE), California Energy Commission, Infosys, Trane, Hydro-Québec and the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance. It was developed by a team led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and is supported by software developer Digital Alchemy.