“These standards should make the entire home performance industry more effective and profitable by dramatically reducing the costs, time, and effort involved in transferring information,” said Robin LeBaron, managing director of the National Home Performance Council, which coordinated the BPI working group to develop these standards.

“Affordable financing is key to attracting homeowners to the home performance market,” said Larry Zarker, BPI CEO. “In turn, attracting financial investors depends on the accurate transfer of data on each project or pool of projects, so that risk is minimized. This standard will facilitate that seamless transfer of data.”

BPI-2100-S-2013: Standard for Home Performance-Related Data Transfer (dubbed Home Performance XML, or the HPXML standard) provides requirements for an extensible mark-up language (XML) standard data transfer protocol that can be used to transfer home performance-related data between any parties involved in a home performance program, including contractors, program administrators, utilities, federal agencies, etc.

BPI-2200-S-2013: Standard for Home Performance-Related Data Collection provides requirements for the prescribed fields for collecting home performance-related data and the minimum measure description collection criteria. BPI-2200 is designed to facilitate the exchange of information and data among all actors in the home performance industry by providing a standard vocabulary for describing terms related to buildings, energy consumption, and energy conservation measures. Each of the data elements defined in BPI-2200 can be transferred via HPXML.

The scope of these standards is limited to existing detached single-family dwellings and townhouses that meet specific criteria.

These data standards were developed by a working group created by BPI’s Standards Technical Committee (STC) and comprised of subject matter experts representing a variety of interest categories and geographical locations. Several home performance programs and software developers participated in beta testing prior to the release of the draft standards.

Following this public review period, BPI-2100 and BPI-2200 will be published as BPI standards.

BPI-2100 and BPI-2200 are also currently in process to become American National Standards and will undergo a full public comment period at a future date, in accordance with ANSI Essential Requirements. Once approved by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), they will be republished as ANSI/BPI standards.

To view the new Data Collection and HPXML standards, visit www.bpi.org/standards_review.aspx. To comment on these standards, follow the instructions at www.bpi.org/feedbackStandardsReview.aspx.

Publication date: 3/11/2013