Climate Change and Energy Demand in Buildings - Marilyn A. Brown, Matt Cox, Ben Staver and Paul Baer, Georgia Institute of Technology

The first parameter is the set point temperatures for calculating CDDs; the second is the exponent for representing the relationship between changes in CDDs to changes in electricity consumption for space cooling. [...] In contrast, energy use in commercial buildings is dominated by internal loads and is also highly affected by the time schedule of use of the premises (e.g., whether or not a school facility is also used in the evenings and on weekends). [...] A typical simplifying assumption in linear symmetric models is that energy demand for heating and cooling use the same balance point temperature and that energy demand responds the same to a marginal change in temperature (either warmer or cooler) which results in a V-shaped relationship between temperature and energy use. [...] The second analysis matches the CDD data to the electricity consumption data compiled in Step 1, using this data to empirically estimate the best fitting balance point for each state in the sample. [...] In the residential and commercial sectors, the lowest best-fitting set points were in the P, NE, and ENC Census divisions, and the highest were in the WSC and SA divisions.