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    • Commercial Reference Building: Small Office

    Metadata Updated: April 11, 2025

    Commercial reference buildings provide complete descriptions for whole building energy analysis using EnergyPlus (see "About EnergyPlus" resource link) simulation software. Included here is data pertaining to the reference building type "Small Office" for each of the 16 climate zones described on the Wiki page (see "OpenEI Wiki Page for Commercial Reference Buildings" resource link), and each of three construction categories: new (2004) construction, post-1980 construction existing buildings, and pre-1980 construction existing buildings.

    The dataset includes four key components: building summary, zone summary, location summary and a picture. Building summary includes details about: form, fabric, and HVAC. Zone summary includes details such as: area, volume, lighting, and occupants for all types of zones in the building. Location summary includes key building information as it pertains to each climate zone, including: fabric and HVAC details, utility costs, energy end use, and peak energy demand.

    In total, DOE developed 16 reference building types that represent approximately 70% of commercial buildings in the U.S.; for each type, building models are available for each of the three construction categories. The commercial reference buildings (formerly known as commercial building benchmark models) were developed by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), in conjunction with three of its national laboratories.

    Additional data is available directly from DOE's Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy (EERE) website (see "About Commercial Buildings" resource link), including EnergyPlus software input files (.idf) and results of the EnergyPlus simulations (.html).

    Note: There have been many changes and improvements since this dataset was released. Several revisions have been made to the models and moved to a different approach to representing typical building energy consumption. For current data on building energy consumption please see the ComStock resource below.

    Access & Use Information

    Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: Creative Commons Attribution

    Downloads & Resources

    Dates

    Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
    Metadata Updated Date April 11, 2025

    Metadata Source

    Harvested from OpenEI data.json

    Other Data Resources

    Additional Metadata

    Resource Type Dataset
    Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
    Metadata Updated Date April 11, 2025
    Publisher National Renewable Energy Laboratory
    Maintainer
    Identifier https://data.openei.org/submissions/167
    Data First Published 2014-11-25T07:00:00Z
    Data Last Modified 2025-04-10T22:09:58Z
    Public Access Level public
    Bureau Code 019:20
    Metadata Context https://openei.org/data.json
    Metadata Catalog ID https://openei.org/data.json
    Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
    Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
    Data Quality True
    Harvest Object Id 43e8b7c7-9b2e-44f0-aeb0-20a47dedb512
    Harvest Source Id 7cbf9085-0290-4e9f-bec1-91653baeddfd
    Harvest Source Title OpenEI data.json
    Homepage URL https://data.openei.org/submissions/167
    License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
    Old Spatial {"type":"Polygon","coordinates":-125.4514,24.5873,-66.5318,24.5873,-66.5318,49.2637,-125.4514,49.2637,-125.4514,24.5873}
    Program Code 019:002
    Projectnumber 19987
    Projecttitle Commercial Reference Building Models
    Source Datajson Identifier True
    Source Hash 9e6b9cef17d62408dcb1c352dcd727da28d4c57f5c2da8aa97f71979a62c4c97
    Source Schema Version 1.1
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