Welcome to Scout

Scout is a software program that estimates the impacts of various energy conservation measures (ECMs) in the U.S. residential and commercial building sectors. To learn more about what Scout can do, check out An Overview of Scout.

If you’re eager to run a full Scout analysis, the Quick Start Guide is the best place to begin.

For guidance on using the Scout web interface, check out the Web Interface Tutorials.

Scout is a project of the U.S. Department of Energy Building Technologies Office (BTO) and is freely available for public use.

Documentation Contents

• An Overview of Scout
  • What is Scout and who should use it?
  • Results specify U.S. energy, CO₂, and cost savings
  • Scout ECMs and their baseline markets
  • ECMs are adopted one of two ways
  • Competition of overlapping ECM markets
• Quick Start Guide
  • 1. Setup Scout and prerequisites
  • 2. Create new ECM definition(s) (optional)
  • 3. Open the command line interface
  • 4. Run using project configuration file(s) (optional)
  • 5. Prepare ECMs for analysis
  • 6. Modify active list of ECMs (optional)
  • 7. Run analysis on active ECMs
  • 8. View results plots and data
• Installation Guide
  • Getting Scout
  • 0. (Optional) Install a package manager
  • 1. Set Up a Python Virtual Environment
  • 2. Install Scout Python package
  • 3. Install a text editor
  • 0. Determine whether you have 32-bit or 64-bit Windows installed
  • 1. Set Up a Python Virtual Environment
  • 2. Install Scout Python package
  • 3. Install a text editor
• Web Interface Tutorials
  • Tutorial 1: Navigating the Landing Page
  • Tutorial 2: Creating and editing ECMs
  • Tutorial 3: Creating new custom analyses
  • Tutorial 4: Viewing and understanding outputs
  • Tutorial 5: Using the Baseline Energy Calculator
• Local Execution Tutorials
  • Tutorial 1: Creating and editing ECMs
  • Tutorial 2: Running with project configuration files
  • Tutorial 3: Preparing ECMs for analysis
  • Tutorial 4: Modifying the active ECMs list
  • Tutorial 5: Running an analysis
  • Tutorial 6: Viewing and understanding outputs
• Analysis Approach
  • Step 1: Develop initial ECM definition(s)
  • Step 2: Finalize ECM definition
  • Step 3: Simulate ECM impact
• Heating and Cooling Load Components
  • Overview
  • Deriving heating and cooling load components
  • References
• ECM Definition Reference
  • Applicable baseline market options
  • Energy efficiency units
  • Installed cost units
  • ECM JSON schema
• EIA Updates
  • Running the EIA update check