An example of the BenchmarkMyBuiding tool. Source: U.S. Department of Energy

Small businesses now have access to a complimentary tool to benchmark a building’s energy use, thanks to a partnership between Lucid Design Group of Oakland, Calif., and the U.S. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL).

While an increasing number of data sources are available to help identify energy and cost savings opportunities from smart technologies and sensor data, turning this data into energy efficiency projects presents a major challenge to building owners and operators. LBNL helped Lucid integrate the Building Performance Database (BPD) and OpenStudio into Lucid’s BuildingOS, a service that automates collection, organization and analysis of building energy data. The result is the BenchmarkMyBuilding system, which uses building type, size and location as inputs.

The tool leverages several government datasets — including EnergyStar’s TargetFinder and the U.S. Energy Information Agency’s Commercial Buildings Energy Consumption Survey data — to identify similar buildings. Getting a benchmarked annual energy cost is as simple and fast as entering a location into a mapping interface.