Energy Compliance and Benchmarking

Roovie supports three energy compliance and benchmarking standards from a single simulation workflow.

A completed simulation can be validated against ASHRAE Standard 140 test cases, checked for California Title 24 compliance using hourly Long-term System Cost calculations, and benchmarked against the national CBECS dataset for peer comparison. These are not separate tools. They draw from the same simulation results and building data.

In One Line

ASHRAE 140 for engine validation. Title 24 for California compliance. CBECS for national benchmarking. All from one simulation.

ASHRAE Standard 140

ASHRAE Standard 140 is the standard method for testing building energy analysis programs. It defines a set of test case buildings with known geometry, materials, and operating conditions. Simulation results are compared against target bands derived from multiple reference programs.

Roovie supports the full set of Standard 140 test cases.

Test Cases

Two building mass series are supported:

• Low-mass (600 series): Cases 600, 610, 620, 630, 640, 650, 660, 670, 680, 685, and 695. These represent lightweight construction with variants for shading, window orientation, thermostat setback, night ventilation, low-E windows, and insulation levels.
• High-mass (900 series): Cases 900, 910, 920, 930, 940, and 950. The same variants applied to heavyweight thermal mass construction.

Validation Tables

Results are compared against 10 standardized tables:

Table	What It Validates
Peak Load Summary	Peak heating and cooling loads in kilowatts
Annual Total Loads	Total annual heating and cooling in megawatt-hours
Annual Incident Solar	Solar radiation by surface orientation in kWh per square meter
Sky Temperature Summary	Average, minimum, and maximum sky temperature
Monthly Summary	Monthly heating and cooling loads
Incident Solar Hourly	Hourly radiation for specific reference days
Sky Temperature Hourly	Hourly sky temperature for reference days
Transmitted Solar Hourly	Hourly solar transmission through fenestration
Fenestration Totals	Window transmitted solar by orientation
Zone Sensible Loads	Hourly zone-level heating and cooling loads

Target Bands

Each metric has a target band defined by minimum, maximum, and mean values derived from reference simulation programs including BSIMAC, CSE, DeST, EnergyPlus, ESP-r, and TRNSYS.

A result is classified as:

• On target — within the min-max band
• Below target — below the minimum
• Above target — above the maximum
• Missing — no data available

The system reports percentage deviation from the target mean and an overall compliance summary showing total metrics, passing, failing, and missing counts.

Why This Matters

ASHRAE 140 validation proves that Roovie's physics engine produces results consistent with established reference programs. This is not a feature for end users to run on their buildings. It is evidence that the engine itself is trustworthy — that the thermal calculations are producing results in the same range as industry-standard tools.

California Title 24

Title 24 is California's building energy code. Roovie supports the Performance Path using the Long-term System Cost metric, which replaced the previous Time Dependent Valuation approach in the 2025 code cycle.

How LSC Works

The Long-term System Cost approach weights energy by when it is consumed, not just how much.

The California Energy Commission publishes hourly multiplier factors for each climate zone. These factors reflect the long-term cost of energy at each hour of the year, accounting for grid conditions, generation costs, and time-of-use dynamics.

The calculation is straightforward:

For each hour of the year (8,760 total):
  electricity_tdv += hourly_kwh × electricity_multiplier
  gas_tdv += hourly_therms × gas_multiplier

total_tdv = electricity_tdv + gas_tdv

The multipliers vary dramatically by hour. Summer peak hours in some climate zones carry factors 10 to 20 times higher than winter nighttime hours. This means a kilowatt-hour consumed at 5 PM on a July afternoon costs far more in TDV terms than the same kilowatt-hour at 3 AM in January.

Climate Zones

California has 16 climate zones. Each zone has its own set of hourly multiplier factors for both electricity and natural gas.

Factor Types

Three types of hourly factors are supported:

• LSC (Long-term System Cost) — the primary compliance metric, expressed in dollars
• Source Energy — energy at the point of generation, expressed in kBtu
• GHG Emissions — greenhouse gas emissions, expressed in kilograms

Code Cycles

The system supports factor sets from multiple code cycles: 2019, 2022, 2025, and 2028. This allows analysis under current requirements and planning for future code updates.

Compliance Determination

A building complies when its proposed design TDV is less than or equal to the baseline design TDV:

If proposed_tdv <= baseline_tdv:
  COMPLIANT
  Savings = baseline_tdv - proposed_tdv
  Margin = (savings / baseline_tdv) × 100%
Else:
  NON-COMPLIANT

Output

The calculation produces:

• Total TDV for electricity and natural gas
• Monthly breakdown with per-month TDV for each fuel type
• Peak TDV hour identification (when the building's energy use has the highest time-weighted cost)
• Average TDV factor (effective cost multiplier across the year)
• Compliance margin percentage when comparing proposed versus baseline

CBECS Benchmarking

CBECS is the Commercial Buildings Energy Consumption Survey conducted by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The 2018 survey covers 6,436 buildings representing the national commercial building stock.

Roovie uses CBECS data to benchmark a building's energy performance against comparable peers.

How Matching Works

The system matches the building being analyzed to the most relevant subset of the CBECS dataset using three criteria:

Building type matching uses a three-layer approach:

1. Exact match — normalized label comparison
2. Keyword pattern matching — regex patterns that map building descriptions to CBECS categories (for example, "medical" and "outpatient" both map to Healthcare Clinic)
3. Fallback — defaults to Commercial Other if no match is found

Supported building types: Office, Retail, School/University, Hospital, Hotel/Motel, Warehouse, Dining, Healthcare Clinic, Religious Building, Convention Center, and Commercial Other.

Climate zone matching maps the building's ASHRAE or IECC climate zone to the simplified CBECS PUBCLIM zones (1 through 5 and 7).

Regional matching maps the building's state to one of four Census regions: Northeast, Midwest, South, or West.

Additional Filters

The matching system can also filter by:

• Floor area range (plus or minus 30 percent of the building's area)
• Number of floors (plus or minus 1 or 2 depending on building height)
• Year built (plus or minus 15 years)

These ranges use intelligent step sizing: small buildings use 1,000 square foot steps while larger buildings use 5,000 square foot steps.

Performance Rating

Once a peer group is identified, the building's EUI is compared against the group's weighted distribution:

Rating	Percentile	Meaning
Exceptional	Top 10 percent	Best efficiency in peer group
Excellent	Top 25 percent	Well above median
Good	Better than median	Above average
Average	50th to 75th percentile	Median performance
Below Average	75th to 90th percentile	Below median
Poor	Bottom 10 percent	Worst efficiency in peer group

Percentile calculations use linear interpolation between known data points and CBECS sample weights (FINALWT) for nationally representative statistics.

Comparison Metrics

The benchmarking output includes:

• Percentile rank — where the building falls in its peer group (0 to 100)
• Performance rating — the six-tier classification above
• Versus median — absolute and percentage difference from the median EUI
• Versus mean — absolute and percentage difference from the mean EUI
• EUI distribution histogram — bucket-based visualization of the peer group's energy use intensity
• Peer group size — how many CBECS records matched the criteria

How They Work Together

These three standards serve different purposes but share the same data foundation:

• ASHRAE 140 validates the simulation engine itself. It answers: "Does the physics engine produce credible results?"
• Title 24 checks code compliance for a specific building in a specific California climate zone. It answers: "Does this building meet the energy code?"
• CBECS benchmarks a building against its national peers. It answers: "How does this building compare to similar buildings?"

A team working on a California office building could:

1. Run ASHRAE 140 test cases to verify the engine is calibrated
2. Simulate the actual building
3. Run Title 24 compliance to check code requirements
4. Run CBECS benchmarking to see how the design compares nationally
5. Use the combined results to inform design decisions and client reporting

All of this uses the same simulation infrastructure, the same building model, and the same results.

What Makes This Different

Most compliance tools are standalone applications. Each standard requires a separate tool, separate inputs, and separate workflows. Results live in different formats and cannot be cross-referenced.

Roovie integrates all three standards into the same platform:

• ASHRAE 140 test cases run against the same physics engine that simulates real buildings
• Title 24 TDV calculations use the same hourly simulation results that feed thermal visualization and calibration
• CBECS benchmarking uses the same building metadata that drives portfolio planning

The standards do not compete for attention or require separate data preparation. They complement each other within a single analysis workflow.

Bottom Line

Roovie supports ASHRAE Standard 140 for engine validation, California Title 24 for performance path compliance, and CBECS for national benchmarking — all from the same simulation results.

This means a single simulation run can prove the engine is trustworthy, demonstrate code compliance, and show how the building compares to its peers. Three different questions, one unified workflow.