Power Signatures as Characteristics of Commercial and Related Buildings

Abstract

This paper proposes the use of "power signatures" as an important concept for building energy analysis. Power signatures are considered to contain "energy or power characteristics" of a building. Developing relationships between energy characteristics and building physical characteristics is seen as an important area for improvement of analytical tools for commercial and related buildings. Knowledge of the causes of variations in energy use, and the expected relative impacts of different schedules, functional uses, and energy systems, should be improved. A categorization of analysis methods is presented to define the parameters of interest for several currently used methods. Power signatures indicate building energy behavior with respect to time, so the parameters of interest are average power level and time of occurrence. Because a rate quantity (power) is used, comparisons between different time steps are practical. If practitioners could begin using power signature concepts to present energy use data on buildings, improved communication of results appears possible. Potential future study could be continued in several areas to improve the use of power signatures and energy analysis overall.