An internet tool for designing energy efficient homes
To help their 4.5 million residential customers make energy efficient decisions, Southern California Gas asked UCLA to develop an Internet-based simulation tool called Project REED (Residential Energy Efficient Design). The critical problem is to give these ratepayers an easy way to visualize the relative effectiveness of their various options. REED is a internet-based tool that calculates the annual gas and electricity cost for each separate building design or operating decision. Hourly climate data for the Typical Meteorological Year (TMY2) in all the climate zones in the SoCalGas service area are built in, as well as utility rates for each type of residential service. REED's Expert System first designs a basic Code Compliant home, then designs a more Energy Efficient design based on local climate, and it shows how much money ratepayers would save. The simulation engine inside REED is SOLAR-5, one of the nation's most widely used whole building energy design tools. SOLAR-5 has been validated against DOE-2 using the BESTEST procedure. This paper, one of a pair describing REED, explains the project from the user's point of view and describes what was learned from the Ratepayer Usability Test. The second paper explains the project from the simulation and software engineering point of view.
- Research Organization:
- Univ. of California, Los Angeles, CA (US)
- OSTI ID:
- 20050795
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: SOLAR 99, Portland, ME (US), 06/12/1999--06/16/1999; Other Information: PBD: 1999; Related Information: In: Solar 99 conference: Proceedings of ASES annual conference -- Proceedings of 24th national passive solar conference, by Campbell-Howe, R.; Wilkins-Crowder, B. [eds.], 779 pages.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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