Rotating Panels for the Commercial Buildings Energy Consumption Survey: A Simulation Study

• Activity Number: 376 - Challenges in Measuring Consumption
• Type: Topic Contributed
• Date/Time: Wednesday, August 10, 2022 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
• Sponsor: Committee on Energy Statistics
• Author(s): Michael Joshua Winkler* and Janice Lent and Caitlin Steiner
• Companies: U.S. Energy Information Administration and U.S. Energy Information Administration and U.S. Energy Information Administration
• Keywords: complex survey; energy consumption; simulation; rotating panel survey

Abstract

EIA’s Commercial Buildings Energy Consumption Survey (CBECS) is the primary source of data on U.S. energy use in the commercial sector. The survey collects detailed information about commercial buildings, energy consuming equipment, and quantities of specific fuels used in commercial buildings. EIA has collected CBECS data approximately every four years between 1979 and 2018, for a total of 11 data collection cycles. The multi-year gap between data collection cycles leaves data users without current data for some years and requires EIA to pay significant survey start-up costs for each cycle. In 2012, EIA asked the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to provide recommendations on the CBECS program. The recommendations included that “an overall assessment of the costs and benefits of introducing a rotating sample design should receive priority as part of EIA’s planning for the near future.” Because a field test of a CBECS rotating panel design would require several years of data collection, EIA is conducting a simulation study in which we create and sample from a series of artificial populations. We discuss the goals and methods of the simulation study.