harshadatascientist / scout

A tool for estimating the future energy use, carbon emissions, and capital and operating cost impacts of energy efficiency and demand flexibility technologies in the U.S. residential and commercial building sectors.

scout

The contents of this repository are all in-progress and should not be expected to be free of errors or to perform any specific functions. Use only with care and caution.

Scout is a software program that estimates the impacts of various energy conservation measures (ECMs) in the U.S. residential and commercial building sectors. Scout evaluates the energy savings, avoided CO₂ emissions, operating cost reductions, and cost-effectiveness (using several metrics) of each ECM under multiple technology adoption scenarios. These results are obtained for the entire U.S., and also broken out by climate zone, building class (i.e., new/existing, residential/commercial), and end use.

Getting Started

Scout is currently a command line-based tool. Follow the Quick Start Guide to start using Scout on your computer.

Scout is free and open-source software and can be used by anyone, subject to the license terms.

Documentation

Documentation for Scout is available online. The documentation includes instructions for setting up a computer to run Scout, tutorials on how to use the components of Scout, a primer on the modeling approach, and reference materials for ECM definitions.

Future Updates

You can track on-going development of Scout in this repository. If you find any errors in the model or opportunities for improvement, contribute to the issue tracker by commenting on an existing issue or submitting a new one.

Scout Web App

The Scout web app allows users to review ECM definitions from the default portfolio in a convenient tabular format; visualize ECM impacts on energy, CO₂ emissions, and operating costs for the default ECM portfolio; and query the baseline energy database.

Baseline Energy Calculator

The Baseline Energy Calculator is part of the Scout web app. It allows users to explore the Scout baseline data. Based on user selections, the calculator yields total baseline U.S. energy use and CO₂ emissions for one or several energy use segments, which can help users evaluate the national impact potential for an ECM of interest.