I am looking for some suggestions from anyone who is using a software application for estimating the total energy consumption of a residential building.

 

The application needs to take into account all of the following: building materials, insulation levels of floors, walls and ceilings, orientation, window types and sizes, overhangs, awnings, shading, solar gain, thermal mass, internal energy and heat loads, HVAC, number of occupants, internal lighting, natural lighting, natural cooling, etc.

 

Basically, everything that affects a real, occupied building.

 

I have been looking at a number of free applications as a starting point. Most of these are either too simplistic or are really meant for commercial applications. Being intended for commercial applications is not a bad thing, they just tend to only contain materials and systems typically found in commercial buildings and not necessarily a residential building.

 

I have looked at eQuest, EnergyPlus, HEED, Hot2000, Hot3000, etc. I am not sure that HEED and eQuest have a GUI elaborate enough to completely specify the building. Or maybe, the areas where I think they are lacking are insignificant. EnergyPlus is now a plugin for Sketchup and allows you to really define the building, but it is a very complex app. Hot3000 just continually crashes and Hot2000 seems too simplistic.

 

I am in the process of building a hypothetical building in each of these that will have a fairly complex energy footprint. I then plan to compare the results.

 

Anyone have any experience with these or other applications and suggestions or insight they care to offer.

 

Thanks,

John

As a HERS rater, I use REM Rate, but I've heard good things about EnergyGauge. Features are here - http://www.energygauge.com/usares/features.htm

Thanks Steve, I will check it out.

hot2000 is used in the Canadian Federal EcoEnergy audit program. What makes it seem too simplistic? Many of the models in hot2000 have been validated against real test buildings at the Building Research Centre in Ottawa. I've used it to model a 111 year old house that was upgraded with a GSHP and the figures produced by hot2000 have been to withing +/- 5% of actual measured figures over the past 3.5 years that I've been avidly logging consumption and heating/cooling degree data.

Granted the GUI in hot2000 is not very friendly as there is no way to graphically enter a model - but could can fairly easily create your own code libraries of wall contruction, window types etc. Air leakage measurement data can be entered and there's good modeling of solar gains (taking into account the SHGC of windows) as well as inter-zone transfers and there's a pretty reasonable model of basement heatloss. The latest version also has solar water heating models, PV generation etc. The only thing I have found missing is the modeling of hot-water preheat through a GSHP desuperheater.

What features do you require that are missing?

Paul.