This paper introduces a temperature-based approach - called the Days Exceeding Threshold-Toa (DET-Toa) method to detect persisting small increase or decrease in the normal building energy consumption. This method identifies an abnormal energy consumption fault when the deviation between the measured and simulated consumption is greater than one standard deviation of the residuals in the baseline period and persists for at least 20 days which are consecutive when ordered according to increasing or decreasing outside air temperature. The fault detection capability of the method is evaluated with simulation tests with two on-campus buildings. Ten synthetic control changes were assumed to happen and lasted for one year for each building. In the test, the DET-Toa method showed superior capacity for detecting abnormal building energy consumption compared with the DET-Date method. It successfully detected 19 synthetic control changes in the 20 simulation test cases. The reason for the better performance of the DET-Toa method is discussed and demonstrated in an example case. The smallest faults that could be identified by the DET-Toa method in the two analyzed buildings and their related energy consumption impact statistics are also provided in the paper. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.