Tianzhen Hong
Tianzhen Hong
Bio
Dr. Tianzhen Hong is a Senior Scientist leading research on technologies, data, methods, computing, occupant behavior, and policy for design and operation of low energy buildings and sustainable urban systems. He is leading the EnergyPlus development at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He established and chaired (Jan 2016 to June 2024) the ASHRAE Technical Committee 7.10 Occupant behavior in building design and operation. He actively contributed to international collaborations such as the 10-year U.S.-China Clean Energy Research Center on Building Energy Efficiency, IEA EBC Annex 53, 66, 79, 80, and 81. He was co-Operating Agent of Annex 66 and co-lead of Subtask 3 of Annex 79. He led the development of two building energy software: CBES and CityBES winning an R&D 100 Award in 2019 and 2022, respectively. He is an IBPSA Fellow, an ASHRAE Fellow, and a Highly Cited Researcher since 2021. He received B.Eng. and Ph.D. in HVACR, and B.Sc. in Applied Mathematics from Tsinghua University, China.
Links
Urban Systems Research
- Urban Systems Group, UrbanSystems.lbl.gov
- City Buildings, Energy, and Sustainability (CityBES), CityBES.lbl.gov
Occupant Behavior Research
- LBNL, behavior.lbl.gov
- Occupancy Simulator, occupancysimulator.lbl.gov
- IEA EBC Annex 79 (2018-2023): Occupant-centric building design and operation
- IEA EBC Annex 66 (2013-2018): Definition and simulation of occupant behavior in buildings
- IEA EBC Annex 53 (2008-2013): Total Energy Use in Buildings: Analysis & Evaluation Methods
- ASHRAE Technical Committee 7.10 Occupant Behavior in Building Design and Operation
Building Energy Modeling and Analysis Tools
- Commercial Building Energy Saver: California version, cbes.lbl.gov; National version, cbespro.lbl.gov
- EnergyPlus, energyplus.net
Publications
- Google Scholar Profile: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=x5m2zBYAAAAJ&hl=en
Curriculum Vitae
hong_cv_for_eta_website.pdfEducation
Awards
Spot: Erin Harbin, Tianzhen Hong, Joshua Kace, Kaiyu Sun, Peter Therkelsen - May 17th 2023
For outstanding planning and execution of the 2023 BTUS Strategic Retreat
2022 R&D 100 Award: City Buildings, Energy, and Sustainability (CityBES) Web Tool for Climate Change Strategies - August 22nd 2022
Buildings generate 39% of global CO2 emissions, but evaluating and prioritizing cost-effective technical solutions for individual buildings at city scale poses a significant challenge for city stakeholders. CityBES is a free, powerful modeling and analysis tool that enables quick and quantitative assessments of actionable recommendations for decarbonizing buildings and improving their thermal resilience against extreme weather at the urban scale. CityBES builds upon open city datasets, international data standards, the powerful EnergyPlus simulation engine, a library of mitigation and adaptation measures, and 3D-GIS visualization to inform decision making on city buildings, energy, and sustainability.
2019 R&D 100 Award: Commercial Building Energy Saver - October 30th 2019
The Commercial Building Energy Saver (CBES), a software toolkit that enables equitable access to building deep retrofit and zero-net energy strategies for these buildings, won a 2019 R&D 100 Award in the software/services category.
The development team includes Berkeley Lab researchers Sang Hoon Lee, Xuan Luo, Kaiyu Sun, Tianzhen Hong, Cynthia Regnier, Mary Ann Piette (all pictured left to right), Yixing Chen, Rongpeng Zhang, Sarah C. Taylor-Lange, and Philip Price. The project was supported by the California Energy Commission and the Department of Energy.