The state of Washington recently wrapped up a lengthy residential energy code update process. The new energy code, Washington State Energy Code 2021, has many updates that will, over time, give builders more code compliance options and better align the code compliance process with valuable Federal Energy Efficient Construction Tax Credits.

IRS released critical 45L clarification and rules. Importantly, homes must be certified and builders must collect the ENERGY STAR or ZERH certificate to substantiate their certification. No longer will an ‘affidavit’ report be needed. In this article we summarize the IRS notification to give you everything you need. to know about the requirements.

We’re introducing a new series where we highlight innovative products that raters and builders can use to optimize the energy performance of new homes. We’re kicking off this series with Aeroseal, a provider of proven air-sealing solutions for HVAC ductwork and building envelopes. By combing through our HERS data, we’ve found some major opportunities for builders to leverage their technology.

We first released Ekotrope Version 4.2 in Beta on June of 2023, and after receiving accreditation from RESNET, we released it out of Beta on October 13th, 2023. This new Ekotrope Version includes significant algorithm changes that will impact HERS and other building energy code results for some homes. Through this article, we would like to share how results may change along with a summary of important improvements and fixes.

It’s been a busy few months at Ekotrope and we have some new updates to share! In addition to program-specific updates, we’ve added new support functionality within Ekotrope RATER that makes it easier to search for support articles. Read more to see how it works.

The direct integration of Ekotrope into an implementer’s new homes program allows for both organizations to leverage their expertise to manage a program that meets raters where they are. With a program supported by Ekotrope, you can embed program requirements, submission processes and savings recommendations directly into the rating software that raters use daily.

We’re thrilled to announce that RESNET’s Carbon Rating Index is now available in Ekotrope RATER in beta. The Carbon Rating Index provides a more accurate metric for measuring emissions that addresses when energy is used and how much of it is used. It calculates the carbon impacts of an individual house or building, without requiring any additional inspections. If you want to start modeling homes using the Carbon Rating Index in Ekotrope RATER, please reach out to us!

The Reports API feature enables tighter integration between Ekotrope RATER and your project management systems. It eliminates the need to manually complete repetitive tasks like sending batches of reports and certificates for different energy models and different programs to your builder clients. The Reports API integration with Inspection Sync allows you to automatically upload your inspection information to Ekotrope RATER and then, once the inspection results are completely updated, send all of the necessary reports to your builders.

After many months of work and gathering feedback from our rating partners, Ekotrope is proud to announce that our Reports API tool is officially live! The Reports API is a new tool that will allow project management software to request a specific report - like a code compliance document, HERS Certificate, or ENERGY STAR Certificate - for a specific energy model. The Reports API will then return a PDF report that your software can automatically email to a client, export, or post to a shared cloud drive.

We’re officially half-way through 2023, and it’s been a busy 6 months at Ekotrope. We have been working on a variety of updates behind the scenes in order to optimize usage of Ekotrope for our utility partners. In addition we’ve made some general updates to the broader tool.

The Market Intelligence Dashboard is a proprietary business development tool from Ekotrope that provides access to data insights from over 1 million HERS-rated homes, representing roughly 1 in 4 homes built each year. These insights represent nearly every facet of the home, including all building specifications as well as the code and rebate criteria they meet. Utility programs can leverage these insights to streamline their online marketplaces, strategize program updates, and perform more targeted outreach to customers.

Until now, the homebuilding industry has primarily relied on the combination of annual average emissions and the HERS Rating Index to measure the energy efficiency of new homes. While the HERS Rating Index is instrumental towards this effort, it does not paint the entire picture of carbon emissions. RESNET’s new Carbon Rating Index gives our industry reliable, accurate way to measure a home's energy usage and subsequent emissions. It signifies a critical shift towards decarbonization for the new construction industry and a major step in reaching our global climate goals.

It’s been a busy few months here at Ekotrope as we build out new programs for 2023. We’re excited to share the work we’ve been doing behind the scenes as we hope it will make running these programs easier for our utility partners and easier for our raters to submit their models. We’ve also been traveling around the country to connect with familiar faces and meet new folks in the industry at conferences.

2023 brings with it lots of changes to the regulatory landscape. There are many changes and opportunities for raters, builders, product manufacturers, and other industry stakeholders to decipher. But raters, builders, and building product manufacturers can overcome the housing market and regulatory challenges by strategically leveraging data to find low hanging fruit opportunities for these rebates and incentives and continue the growth in HERS Ratings and energy efficient products. We took a look at some high performing products with adoption discrepancies to understand the impact that better equipment would have on rebate and incentive compliance. In this analysis, we found thousands of dollars in untapped incentives.

Gas ovens are typically known for having better responsiveness and better heat control, but induction ovens actually heat faster than gas, are safer, and are better for the environment. Ekotrope Founder and Lead Engineer, Nick Sisler, discovered this for himself when he replaced his gas oven with an induction oven after experiencing a gas leak in his home. After a few months of use, the benefits of an induction oven have proven to outweigh the drawbacks of the price of installation and the small learning curve to use it. This blog outlines Nick’s experience and shares some insight about induction ovens.

Ekotrope released in-app Scenario Modeling to HERS Raters in July of 2022. Since then, there have been thousands of design changes analyzed over thousands of energy models to provide builders with answers to their time-sensitive design decisions.

This blog will review all 25,000 combinations analyzed using Scenario Modeling on 5,000 unique house plans since July 2022.

ChatGPT, a tool developed by OpenAI, is a powerful artificial intelligence software tool that can generate believable, well-written text responses to any prompt imaginable in almost any language. Having explored and experimented with ChatGPT, I want to share my experience and thoughts on how it could be used in the HERS Rater workflow, and how it may disrupt some aspects of our business.

Last month, we chatted with a few members of the EnergyLogic team about their roles at EnergyLogic and how they leverage Ekotrope’s Inspection Sync tool with their DASH platform to streamline the inspection and field data collection process. During the session, Sam and Jackson shed some light on how their organization uses Inspection Sync with DASH, how it’s sped up their processes, and more.

IECC 2021 was approved and finalized in 2021 and has gradually been adopted by states across the country. Montana, Nevada, Colorado, New Jersey, and a handful of municipalities have already adopted the new code while others such as Minnesota, Michigan, and Massachusetts have plans to adopt the code in some form in 2023. In this article, we will discuss the current state of homes passing and failing IECC 2021 based on Ekotrope Rating data as well as the building products that have significant impacts on passing rates.

Last month we sat down with Chris Urbanus, Director of Energy Services at Burgess, to discuss their business and how they leverage Ekotrope's Scenario Modeling tool to provide faster and more comprehensive guidance to their builders. You can read the highlights from our conversation here.