APPLICATION OF DOE-2 TO RESIDENTIAL BUILDING ENERGY PERFORMANCE STANDARDS

One important requirement emerging from national and international efforts to shift from our present energy-intensive way of life to an energy conservation mode is the development of standards for assessing and regulating energy use and performance in buildings. This paper describes a life-cycle-cost approach to Building Energy Performance Standards (BEPS) calculated by using DOE-2: The Energy Use Analysis of Buildings Computer Program. The procedure outlined raises important questions that must be answered before the energy budgets devised from this approach can be reliably used as a policy tool, The DOE-2 program was used to calculate the energy consumption in prototype buildings and in their modified versions in which energy conservation measures were effected. The energy use of a modified building with lowest life-cycle-cost determines the energy budget for all buildings of that type. These calculations were based on a number of assumptions that may be controversial. These assumptions regard accuracy of the model, comparison of the DOE-2 program with other programs, stability of the energy budget, and sensitivity of the results to variations in the building parameters