Guidebook — City Energy Analyst

GUIDEBOOK · CEA-4 APP TRAINING
Welcome to the comprehensive training guide for the City Energy Analyst 4 (CEA-4) Application. This documentation covers all features available through the CEA-4 dashboard interface.
This guide is designed for end users who want to learn how to use the CEA-4 App effectively. Each section provides detailed information about specific feature categories, including:
New to CEA-4? Start with these resources:
The CEA-4 App organises its features into the following categories:
Tools for exchanging data with external applications and generating summary reports.
Calculate solar radiation on building surfaces for renewable energy assessments.
Evaluate renewable energy generation potential for buildings and districts.
Forecast hourly and annual energy demand for heating, cooling, electricity, and more.
Design and analyse district heating and cooling networks.
Assess environmental impacts and costs of building energy systems using what-if supply scenarios. All four features run on a shared what-if scenario; LCA Part 1: Energy by Carrier must run first and produces the configuration.json consumed by the other three.
Optimise energy supply systems for buildings and districts.
Prepare and validate input data for CEA analysis.
Supporting tools for data conversion, format verification, and more.
Create charts and plots to visualise CEA results. Fifteen plots, covering demand, carriers, emissions, costs, solar, comfort and optimisation:
Model how a district changes over time — construction, demolition and retrofit across a sequence of years — and run analyses on each year.
Side-by-side comparison workspace. Columns are scenarios, what-if variants or pathway years; cards (plots, KPIs, maps, notes) are drawn for every column at once.
A standard CEA-4 analysis typically follows this sequence:
Create New Scenario (One-time setup)
Solar Analysis (Solar Radiation Analysis)
Demand Analysis (Energy Demand Forecasting)
Renewable Energy Assessment (Renewable Energy Potential)
Network Design (Optional - for district systems)
Optimisation (Optional)
Impact Assessment (Life Cycle Analysis - LCA Parts 1, 2a, 2b, 2c)
Results & Reporting (Visualisation & Export)
If you encounter issues:
Last Updated: September 2026 CEA Version: 4.0.0-beta.8
Source: view raw on GitHub ↗
CEA is an open-source urban building energy modeling platform for the design of low-carbon cities. It has been hosted by the Chair of Architecture and Building Systems at ETH Zurich since 2013.
© 2026 City Energy Analyst — ETH Zürich & uuen Company. Open-source under the MIT license.