Hi Laura,
According to the User Guide, the “energy_sav” column within “buildings_with_stats[suffix].shp” provides savings for each building in total monetary units over your period of interest. However, unless you entered the optional input of energy cost (e.g.: $ / kWh) for each building type, the model would be unable to calculate such monetary savings. I suspect that you did NOT input energy costs, and therefore such results are not sensible. I actually have ‘correcting this information in the User Guide’ on my list of tasks to do, so I’m glad you are forcing us to prioritize that, but I apologize for the confusion it’s causing you in the meantime.
My understanding is that when energy costs are not provided as an input, the “energy_sav” column actually provides results for each building in total kWh saved, or mitigated, over the entire period of interest. (I believe that’s a YES to your question.) So, if your input data covered a single month (you stated in yesterday’s post that your analysis is of July in Phoenix, Arizona, USA), then those values represent the cumulative kWh saved over all of July. Most of the values you’ve shared seem reasonable to me, with the possible exception of those in the 100,000s range, like 148,087.8 and 219,075 for residential high density, especially for a single month. But, while those values are quite large, they may be reasonable given how HOT Phoenix’s mean temperature is in July (>40C). Did you use the cooling degree days approach? If so, to what temp did you assume buildings were being cooled (thermostat setting)?
Thanks,
Jesse