The SCE Benchmarking Database is a tool meant to allow designers, builders, state and local governments, utilities, and building science experts to make informed decisions about new construction buildings in the State of California. The purpose of the project was to develop a free, open-source and statewide database for informing new construciton energy design decisions.
This interactive benchmarking tool from Southern California Edison (SCE) serves up 6 categories of energy use and emissions data on 15 building types, 3 code vintages, 16 climate zones, 3 operational customizations, and 13 end uses. You can view the results in up to 12 different graphical configuarations and export the hourly data as a CSV file.
The purpose of the project was to develop a free, open-source and statewide database for providing:
A benchmark for new construction energy modeling results
Performance targets for possible simplified compliance pathways for the CA Energy Code and local reach codes.
A baseline for public new construction incentive programs and certificates.
The tool contains results from building prototype models representing new construction following the standard designs outlined in the Alternative Calculation Methods (ACM) Reference Manuals for the 2008, 2013, 2016 Building Efficiency Standards. The prototypes include residential and non-residential buildings with varying schedule profiles (short, average, and long operation) modeled in each of the 16 California climate zones to offer the user a wide range of benchmarked data. The database includes 4 residential building prototypes and 22 non-residential building prototypes, all based on the original DOE-2 DEER prototypes, but translated into California Simulation Engine (CSE) and EnergyPlus, respectively. Additionally, 3 new commercial building prototypes were created in EnergyPlus to expand beyond the building types covered by DEER.
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