Simple and effective computation methods are needed to calculate energy efficiency in buildings for building thermal comfort and HVAC system simulations. This paper, which is based upon the theory of thermoelectricity analogy, develops a new harmonic method, the thermoelectricity analogy method (TEAM), to compute the periodic heat transfer in external building envelopes (EBE). It presents, in detail, the principles and specific techniques of TEAM to calculate both the decay rates and time lags of EBE. First, a set of linear equations is established using the theory of thermoelectricity analogy. Second, the temperature of each node is calculated by solving the linear equations set. Finally, decay rates and time lags are found by solving simple mathematical expressions. Comparisons show that this method is highly accurate and efficient. Moreover, relative to the existing harmonic methods, which are based on the classical control theory and the method of separation of variables, TEAM does not require complicated derivation and is amenable to hand computation and programming. (c) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.