ANSI 301 - 2019 Updates in Ekotrope RATER Version 4.0.0 with Nathan Culver from Southface Institute

Version 4.0.0 of Ekotrope RATER is here! We are eager to share all of the updates with our customers as we believe these new features will offer much more flexibility and control over your projects. Specifically, Version 4.0.0 supports ANSI 301 - 2019 which eliminated the limitation of HERS energy models to low-rise buildings. With this standard update, there is no longer any sort of limitation on height.

To clarify, changes in regard to the elimination of the height limits will not have an impact on the user-interface or data entry requirements, it is a change to the standard and algorithm. For example, the algorithm was updated to reflect a more robust air exchange rate calculation to better support multi-family ratings.

We sat down with Nathan Culver, Senior Technical Program Manager at Southface Institute, to talk about how these changes impact raters, providers, and 3rd party QA providers.

Save Money

In our conversation with Nathan, one of the biggest benefits of this update to him was the reduction in costs associated with multi-family projects. Previously, a whole building energy model such as an eQuest model was required for multi-family high-rise buildings (or other ASHRAE 90.1 compliant models). These models often cost tens of thousands of dollars to build and sometimes require a professional engineer. Now, with the ability to model these projects in Ekotrope RATER, users will save money on subcontractors, save money on labor spent on multi-family projects, and even potentially make more money as this opens up the opportunity to model different types of houses.

Save Time

This update will be a huge time saver according to Nathan, as he mentioned that his company spends a lot of time going back and forth with energy modeling subcontractors making the model and going over changes throughout the process. This process was not only expensive in terms of funds but also in terms of labor. Your company may have a few people in-house who have the knowledge and expertise to put together a multi-family model but this is typically time draining and takes away from other tasks.

With the updates in Version 4.0.0 you can expect a multi-family model to now take just a fraction of the time. This gives you the ability to take on more projects, spend less time going back and forth with subcontractors or even in-house engineers, and utilize the opportunity to grow your business.

Control and Flexibility

You also now have more control over your models and with that comes a higher level of flexibility when it comes to making changes to them. Because you don’t need to rely on external resources for these projects, users will find the opportunity to be more agile in their work.

Previously, a high-rise energy model was completed by a professional engineer using a difficult and painful to use software tool. This puts the power back into the hands of users rather than needing to rely on other resources with high expertise in this given field. Users can work more efficiently and more directly on projects, thus allowing them to tweak and edit as they see fit.

The Larger Impact

During our chat we asked Nathan, “What do you think will be the larger impact on the industry as a whole?” He responded, “I think this update will empower raters and give them a whole new section of work to do … it gives more direct control to HERS raters.” Here at Ekotrope, we believe this to be one of the biggest improvements to come out of Version 4.0.0 as we created Ekotrope RATER on the premise of making energy efficiency more accessible to all.

Further, Nathan mentioned that he believed this update would allow Ekotrope RATER users to win more work. Previously, many HERS Rating companies were using subcontractors to build out high-rise models and were at a disadvantage bidding for these projects against firms with high-rise energy modeling capabilities. In the end, we hope that our users will win more work with this new feature and provide the value-add service of energy modeling with Ekotrope RATER for more projects and building types - avoiding the need to subcontract the work.

Overall, we are very excited about the opportunities that these updates will bring to our users. We’d like to give a big thank you to Nathan at Southface Institute for sitting down with us to talk about the Version 4.0.0 update in terms of ANSI 301-2019. We hope you all found this article helpful and, as always, please reach out to us at support@ekotrope.com if you have any questions.

For over 40 years, Southface Institute has been a leader in the research, design and implementation of a regenerative economy for the Southeast. Southface Institute is a 501 (c)(3) non-profit that promotes sustainable homes, workplaces, and communities through education, research, advocacy, and technical assistance.