IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/appene/v276y2020ics0306261920309259.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

EnergyStar++: Towards more accurate and explanatory building energy benchmarking

Author

Listed:
  • Arjunan, Pandarasamy
  • Poolla, Kameshwar
  • Miller, Clayton

Abstract

Building energy performance benchmarking has been adopted widely in the USA and Canada through the Energy Star Portfolio Manager platform. Building operations and energy management professionals have long used this simple 1–100 score to understand how their building compares to its peers. This single number is easy to use but is created by potentially inaccurate multiple linear regression (MLR) models and lacks much further information about why a building achieves that score. This paper proposes a methodology that enhances the existing Energy Star calculation method by increasing accuracy and providing additional model output processing to help explain why a building is achieving a particular score. Two new prediction models were proposed and tested: multiple linear regression with feature interactions (MLRi) and gradient boosted trees (GBT). Both models performed better than a baseline Energy Star MLR model as well as four baseline models from previous benchmarking studies. This paper shows that for six building types, on average, the third-order MLRi models achieved a 4.9% increase in adjusted R2 and a 7.0% decrease in normalized root mean squared error (NRMSE) over the baseline MLR model. More substantially, the most accurate GBT models, on average, achieved a 24.9% increase in adjusted R2 and a 13.7% decrease in NMRSE against the baseline MLR model. In addition, a set of techniques was developed to help determine which factors most influence a building’s energy use versus its peers using SHapley Additive exPlanation (SHAP) values. The SHAP force visualization, in particular, offered an accessible overview of the aspects of the building that influenced the score that even non-technical users can interpret. This methodology was tested on the 2012 Commercial Building Energy Consumption Survey (CBECS)(1,812 buildings) and public data sets from the energy disclosure programs of New York City (11,131 buildings) and Seattle (2,073 buildings).

Suggested Citation

  • Arjunan, Pandarasamy & Poolla, Kameshwar & Miller, Clayton, 2020. "EnergyStar++: Towards more accurate and explanatory building energy benchmarking," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 276(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:appene:v:276:y:2020:i:c:s0306261920309259
    DOI: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2020.115413
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306261920309259
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.apenergy.2020.115413?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Papadopoulos, Sokratis & Kontokosta, Constantine E., 2019. "Grading buildings on energy performance using city benchmarking data," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 233, pages 244-253.
    2. Seong-Hwan Yoon & Cheol-Soo Park, 2017. "Objective Building Energy Performance Benchmarking Using Data Envelopment Analysis and Monte Carlo Sampling," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(5), pages 1-12, May.
    3. Buck, J. & Young, D., 2007. "The potential for energy efficiency gains in the Canadian commercial building sector: A stochastic frontier study," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 32(9), pages 1769-1780.
    4. Chung, William, 2011. "Review of building energy-use performance benchmarking methodologies," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 88(5), pages 1470-1479, May.
    5. Roth, Jonathan & Rajagopal, Ram, 2018. "Benchmarking building energy efficiency using quantile regression," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 152(C), pages 866-876.
    6. Palmer, Karen & Walls, Margaret, 2015. "Does Information Provision Shrink the Energy Efficiency Gap? A Cross-City Comparison of Commercial Building Benchmarking and Disclosure Laws," RFF Working Paper Series dp-15-12, Resources for the Future.
    7. Khayatian, Fazel & Sarto, Luca & Dall'O', Giuliano, 2017. "Building energy retrofit index for policy making and decision support at regional and national scales," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 206(C), pages 1062-1075.
    8. Park, Hyo Seon & Lee, Minhyun & Kang, Hyuna & Hong, Taehoon & Jeong, Jaewook, 2016. "Development of a new energy benchmark for improving the operational rating system of office buildings using various data-mining techniques," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 173(C), pages 225-237.
    9. Roth, Jonathan & Lim, Benjamin & Jain, Rishee K. & Grueneich, Dian, 2020. "Examining the feasibility of using open data to benchmark building energy usage in cities: A data science and policy perspective," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 139(C).
    10. Li, Zhengwei & Han, Yanmin & Xu, Peng, 2014. "Methods for benchmarking building energy consumption against its past or intended performance: An overview," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 325-334.
    11. Constantine E. Kontokosta & Danielle Spiegel-Feld & Sokratis Papadopoulos, 2020. "The impact of mandatory energy audits on building energy use," Nature Energy, Nature, vol. 5(4), pages 309-316, April.
    12. Li, Qiong & Meng, Qinglin & Cai, Jiejin & Yoshino, Hiroshi & Mochida, Akashi, 2009. "Applying support vector machine to predict hourly cooling load in the building," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 86(10), pages 2249-2256, October.
    13. Xuchao, Wu & Priyadarsini, Rajagopalan & Siew Eang, Lee, 2010. "Benchmarking energy use and greenhouse gas emissions in Singapore's hotel industry," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(8), pages 4520-4527, August.
    14. Annunziata, Eleonora & Frey, Marco & Rizzi, Francesco, 2013. "Towards nearly zero-energy buildings: The state-of-art of national regulations in Europe," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 125-133.
    15. Lee, Siew Eang & Rajagopalan, Priyadarsini, 2008. "Building energy efficiency labeling programme in Singapore," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(10), pages 3982-3992, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Branden M. Deiss & Mallori Herishko & Lauren Wright & Michelle Maliborska & J. Patrick Abulencia, 2021. "Analysis of Energy Consumption in Commercial and Residential Buildings in New York City before and during the COVID-19 Pandemic," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(21), pages 1-14, October.
    2. Andrews, Abigail & Jain, Rishee K., 2022. "Beyond Energy Efficiency: A clustering approach to embed demand flexibility into building energy benchmarking," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 327(C).
    3. Jin, Xiaoyu & Xiao, Fu & Zhang, Chong & Chen, Zhijie, 2022. "Semi-supervised learning based framework for urban level building electricity consumption prediction," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 328(C).
    4. Jaqueline Litardo & Ruben Hidalgo-Leon & Guillermo Soriano, 2021. "Energy Performance and Benchmarking for University Classrooms in Hot and Humid Climates," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(21), pages 1-17, October.
    5. Zhang, Chaobo & Li, Junyang & Zhao, Yang & Li, Tingting & Chen, Qi & Zhang, Xuejun & Qiu, Weikang, 2021. "Problem of data imbalance in building energy load prediction: Concept, influence, and solution," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 297(C).
    6. Luca Gugliermetti & Fabrizio Cumo & Sofia Agostinelli, 2024. "A Future Direction of Machine Learning for Building Energy Management: Interpretable Models," Energies, MDPI, vol. 17(3), pages 1-27, February.
    7. Stéphane C. K. Tékouabou & Ștefan Cristian Gherghina & Hamza Toulni & Pedro Neves Mata & José Moleiro Martins, 2022. "Towards Explainable Machine Learning for Bank Churn Prediction Using Data Balancing and Ensemble-Based Methods," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 10(14), pages 1-16, July.
    8. Salah Vaisi & Saleh Mohammadi & Benedetto Nastasi & Kavan Javanroodi, 2020. "A New Generation of Thermal Energy Benchmarks for University Buildings," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(24), pages 1-18, December.
    9. Ali, Aliyuda & Aliyuda, Kachalla & Elmitwally, Nouh & Muhammad Bello, Abdulwahab, 2022. "Towards more accurate and explainable supervised learning-based prediction of deliverability for underground natural gas storage," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 327(C).
    10. Li, Ao & Xiao, Fu & Zhang, Chong & Fan, Cheng, 2021. "Attention-based interpretable neural network for building cooling load prediction," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 299(C).
    11. Chen, Xia & Geyer, Philipp, 2022. "Machine assistance in energy-efficient building design: A predictive framework toward dynamic interaction with human decision-making under uncertainty," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 307(C).
    12. Vaisi, Salah & Varmazyari, Pouya & Esfandiari, Masoud & Sharbaf, Sara A., 2023. "Developing a multi-level energy benchmarking and certification system for office buildings in a cold climate region," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 336(C).
    13. Wenninger, Simon & Kaymakci, Can & Wiethe, Christian, 2022. "Explainable long-term building energy consumption prediction using QLattice," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 308(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Geraldi, Matheus Soares & Ghisi, Enedir, 2022. "Data-driven framework towards realistic bottom-up energy benchmarking using an Artificial Neural Network," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 306(PA).
    2. Andrews, Abigail & Jain, Rishee K., 2022. "Beyond Energy Efficiency: A clustering approach to embed demand flexibility into building energy benchmarking," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 327(C).
    3. Zhou, Yuren & Lork, Clement & Li, Wen-Tai & Yuen, Chau & Keow, Yeong Ming, 2019. "Benchmarking air-conditioning energy performance of residential rooms based on regression and clustering techniques," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 253(C), pages 1-1.
    4. Roth, Jonathan & Lim, Benjamin & Jain, Rishee K. & Grueneich, Dian, 2020. "Examining the feasibility of using open data to benchmark building energy usage in cities: A data science and policy perspective," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 139(C).
    5. Geraldi, Matheus Soares & Ghisi, Enedir, 2022. "Integrating evidence-based thermal satisfaction in energy benchmarking: A data-driven approach for a whole-building evaluation," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 244(PB).
    6. Moya, Diego & Torres, Roberto & Stegen, Sascha, 2016. "Analysis of the Ecuadorian energy audit practices: A review of energy efficiency promotion," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 289-296.
    7. Benedetti, Miriam & Bonfa', Francesca & Bertini, Ilaria & Introna, Vito & Ubertini, Stefano, 2018. "Explorative study on Compressed Air Systems’ energy efficiency in production and use: First steps towards the creation of a benchmarking system for large and energy-intensive industrial firms," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 227(C), pages 436-448.
    8. Chung, William, 2011. "Review of building energy-use performance benchmarking methodologies," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 88(5), pages 1470-1479, May.
    9. Roth, Jonathan & Rajagopal, Ram, 2018. "Benchmarking building energy efficiency using quantile regression," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 152(C), pages 866-876.
    10. Liu, Xue & Ding, Yong & Tang, Hao & Fan, Lingxiao & Lv, Jie, 2022. "Investigating the effects of key drivers on energy consumption of nonresidential buildings: A data-driven approach integrating regularization and quantile regression," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 244(PA).
    11. Ma, Dingyuan & Li, Xiaodong & Lin, Borong & Zhu, Yimin, 2023. "An intelligent retrofit decision-making model for building program planning considering tacit knowledge and multiple objectives," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 263(PB).
    12. Park, Hyo Seon & Lee, Minhyun & Kang, Hyuna & Hong, Taehoon & Jeong, Jaewook, 2016. "Development of a new energy benchmark for improving the operational rating system of office buildings using various data-mining techniques," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 173(C), pages 225-237.
    13. Roth, Jonathan & Martin, Amory & Miller, Clayton & Jain, Rishee K., 2020. "SynCity: Using open data to create a synthetic city of hourly building energy estimates by integrating data-driven and physics-based methods," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 280(C).
    14. Amasyali, Kadir & El-Gohary, Nora M., 2018. "A review of data-driven building energy consumption prediction studies," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 81(P1), pages 1192-1205.
    15. Zhang, Bin & Lu, Danting & He, Yan & Chiu, Yung-ho, 2018. "The efficiencies of resource-saving and environment: A case study based on Chinese cities," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 150(C), pages 493-507.
    16. Wang, Ran & Lu, Shilei & Feng, Wei, 2020. "A novel improved model for building energy consumption prediction based on model integration," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 262(C).
    17. Deb, C. & Schlueter, A., 2021. "Review of data-driven energy modelling techniques for building retrofit," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 144(C).
    18. Juaidi, Adel & AlFaris, Fadi & Montoya, Francisco G. & Manzano-Agugliaro, Francisco, 2016. "Energy benchmarking for shopping centers in Gulf Coast region," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 247-255.
    19. Li, Zhengwei & Han, Yanmin & Xu, Peng, 2014. "Methods for benchmarking building energy consumption against its past or intended performance: An overview," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 325-334.
    20. Capozzoli, Alfonso & Piscitelli, Marco Savino & Neri, Francesco & Grassi, Daniele & Serale, Gianluca, 2016. "A novel methodology for energy performance benchmarking of buildings by means of Linear Mixed Effect Model: The case of space and DHW heating of out-patient Healthcare Centres," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 171(C), pages 592-607.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:appene:v:276:y:2020:i:c:s0306261920309259. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/405891/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.