The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Building Technologies program has set aggressive goals for energy efficiency improvements in buildings that will require collaboration between the DOE laboratories and the building industry. This report details the development of standard or reference energy models for the most common commercial buildings to serve as starting points for energy efficiency research. These models represent reasonably realistic building characteristics and construction practices. Fifteen commercial building types and one multifamily residential building were determined by consensus between DOE,

We conducted simulation-based research to study the energy impacts of outside air on U.S. commercial buildings stock. We derived detailed building models from 4,820 buildings in the 2003 Commercial Buildings Energy Consumption Survey (CBECS). Combined with the appropriate weighting factors these 4,820 models form the basis of this national scale study. The energy effects of outside air on commercial buildings were analyzed according to three types of construction. • The commercial sector was analyzed based on a set of models called the Existing Stock Construction Group, which is designed to represent the current CBECS buildings.

Sensors, actuators, and controllers, which collectively serve as the backbone of cyberphysical systems for building energy management, are one of the core technical areas of investment for achieving the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Building Technologies Office's (BTO's) goals for energy affordability in the national building stock-both commercial and residential. In fact, an aggregated annual energy savings of 29% is estimated in the commercial sector alone through the implementation of efficiency measures using current state-of-the-art sensors and controls to retune buildings by optimizing programmable settings based on occupant schedules and comfort requirements, as well as detecting and diagnosing equipment operation and installation problems (Fernandez et al. 2017).

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A number of colleagues made this work possible. The authors greatly appreciate the assistance of Brent Griffith and the NREL EnergyPlus analysis and modeling team. Their simulation development and support allowed us to evaluate a variety of energy efficiency technologies. We would also like to thank NREL's High Performance Computing Center's Wesley Jones and Jim Albin for their support in providing dedicated Linux cluster nodes for the simulations needed for the analysis. Finally, we extend our thanks to those who helped edit and review the document: Stefanie Woodward, Michael Deru, and Ian Doebber (all of NREL). iv Executive SummaryThis report documents technical analysis aimed at providing design guidance that achieves wholebuilding energy savings of at least 50% over ASHRAE Standard 90.1-2004 in medium-sized retail buildings. It represents an initial step towards determining how to provide design guidance for energy savings targets larger than 30%, and was developed by the Commercial Buildings Section at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), under the direction of the DOE Building Technologies Program.This report:• Documents the modeling and integrated analysis methods used to identify cost-effective sets of recommendations for different locations and business activities.• Demonstrates sets of recommendations that meet, or exceed, the 50% goal. There are forty eight sets of recommendations, one for each combination of sixteen climate zones and three levels of unregulated plug loads.This technical support document (TSD), along with a sister document for grocery stores (Hale et al. 2008), also evaluates the possibility of compiling a 50% Advanced Energy Design Guide (AEDG) in the tradition of the 30% AEDGs available through the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and AirConditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) and developed by an inter-organizational committee structure. In particular, we comment on how design guidance should be developed and presented in the next round of 50% TSDs for deployment as AEDGs. MethodologyBecause it is important to account for energy interactions between building subsystems, NREL used EnergyPlus to model the predicted energy performance of baseline buildings and low-energy buildings to verify that the goal of 50% energy savings can be met. EnergyPlus was selected because it computes building energy use based on the interaction of the climate, building form and fabric, internal gains, HVAC systems, and renewable energy systems. Percent energy savings are based on a minimally codecompliant building as described in Appendix G of ASHRAE 90.1-2004, and whole-building, net site energy use intensity (EUI): the amount of energy a building uses for both regulated and unregulated loads, minus any renewable energy generated within its footprint, normalized by building area.The following steps were used to determine 50% savings:• Define architectural-program characteristics (design aspects not addressed by ASHRAE 90.1-2004) for typical retail stores, thereby defining prototype models....