Background

Over the life of a building, its energy performance may be measured and analyzed by many individuals for a variety of purposes. Perspectives on energy performance range from global, to regional, to individual buildings, and finally to specific systems. Users of energy performance data include policy makers, owners, designers, operators, raters, and researchers.

Many tools exist to analyze building energy performance in different ways, at different levels, and at different stages in the life of a building. With each of these tools, the building energy performance is quantified in a manner that fits the needs of the users. However, the methods and metrics from these tools are often inconsistent with each other. In addition, performance numbers are sometimes misrepresented or misused to cite energy savings beyond the accuracy of the numbers.

In addition to tools, researchers must also examine the numerous procedures used for analyzing building energy performance. Many of the existing procedures are very general in scope and tend to outline the stages of project planning, management, and execution, but do not encompass the level of detail necessary to standardize specific measurements among buildings. On the other hand, the existing procedures that do encompass the necessary level of detail are not sufficiently general to provide a standard basis of comparison among buildings.

The Performance Metrics Research Project attempts to resolve these very challenging issues with the following approach:

• Standardization: Standard performance metric definitions provide a consistent basis for comparing energy performance among buildings.
  
  
• Versatility: The analysis is customized to the facility boundaries, energy configuration, analysis goals, and analysis budget that apply to a given project.
  
  
• Efficiency: The data collection is carefully matched to the goals of the analysis and the study questions, avoiding the common pitfalls of too little or too much data.

Each of the procedures in this series is a document that outlines a measurement protocol, leading to measured values of the standard performance metrics. The primary users for whom these documents are intended are building energy analysts and technicians who design, install, and operate data acquisition systems, and who analyze and report building energy performance data. In addition, the metric definitions will be useful to others who interpret and apply such data.

• Users and Uses
• Workshops