As an avid TRACE user, I always wanted to learn eQUEST, but trainings were hard to find (and support was near impossible to get!). With a growing online community, the need for centralized support has dwindled and eQUEST has become even more popular. 

Learning eQUEST has paid off faster than I ever imagined. I had no idea how big the community was until I started working with it. 

Apart from the fact that learning eQUEST will help you better understand TRACE 700 (like learning Spanish helps with understanding the nuances English, verb conjugation anyone?) - here are 12 great reasons to learn eQUEST, and if you think they are great too, head over to our eQUEST course!

1) UN - Unmet hours. You can easily eliminate unmet hours!

How great is this? There is actually a field in eQUEST where you can simply change the “throttling range” and instantly eliminate unmet hours. The throttling range is not defined in 90.1-2007, so this is 100% LEED compliant. 

2)  Modern Graphics!
It’s Sleek. It’s sexy. You can see your building! It’s even interactive. Check out the video above!

3) SPEED. It’s fast! 
How fast is eQUEST? It’s fast. A file that takes an hour to calculate in TRACE 700 will take only minutes to calculate in eQUEST. That means no more late nights waiting for the calculation to complete.

But not only that, the intuitive wizards make the modeling process itself faster.

4) Community.
The eQUEST community dwarfs all others. Here are some stats from the onebuilding.org emails (a group where users email each other for help, and some super geniuses give FREE support)

Since April 2008:

Total Posts on eQUEST: 7500+
Total Post on TRACE 700: ~180

Total eQUEST users actively participating: 1016+
Total TRACE 700 users actively participating: 82

5) Any Variable, Anytime.
Yup, you can virtually get anything out of the eQUEST results and even customize reports. While TRACE 700 does have this ability, it is not well known or publicized as it would be impossible to support (I guess there is an advantage to eQUEST for not having a support center).

6) Weather Import Automatically
Select the weather, eQUEST connects to the internet, 20 seconds later you are done. No importing weather. And let’s face it, if you don’t have an internet connection you likely aren’t an energy-modeler.

7) NO ARCHIVING
Wait what? No 15 character limits? No archive crashing? That’s right. Share your files as is. Simply send your pd2 file and boom, done (and sometimes people send their inp files too). 

Hassle free sharing and you can make libraries if you want too. Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t make libraries in eQUEST, that’s easy too.

8) Natural Advantage Learning It
TRACE 700 uses much of the DOE-2 engine - the engine that eQUEST uses. In fact, many of the calculations are identical and it’s just the interface that differs. Thus, your knowledge of TRACE will make the easy eQUEST interface even easier to understand

9) Increased employ-ability and more contracts to complete
Just look at the size of the eQUEST market. Learning eQUEST guarantees that you can get more work. Couple the eQUEST market, with the fact that it’s free, and throw in these harsh economic times.... You could get fired one day, and be self-employed the next with virtually no startup costs!

10) Like we just said, IT’S FREE
Did we mention it’s free? Zero cost upfront, zero renewals, nada. With all the web tools available and online trainings, it’s a no-brainer.

11) MORE LEED POINTS
Yup, I said it. This isn’t an issue of accuracy either. Remember the algorithms are similar. The issue is that the eQUEST market is so large that LEED modeling is largely tailored (and worded) to incorporate eQUEST. You have a much better chance of getting a LEED reviewer that fully understands eQUEST, and thus asks less questions. Couple this with the extra time you gain with it’s speed, and you have more time to find more LEED points

12) Finally....  If you’re smart and you know it, use eQUEST
Smart people don’t really need support anyway. If you’re a clever person you probably find that you don’t need support unless there is a bug. 

But more importantly, the open source nature of eQUEST allows you to build tools to parse data or make quick changes. 

Example 1 - files created with the wizards produce text files that can be quickly edited by a clever person through the use of a text editor and the “Find & Replace” function.

Example 2 - We’ve seen many people create crawlers that digs through all the eQUEST output and spits out a spreadsheet with exactly the specific data they need. You can’t do anything on this level in TRACE since the .trc files can only be edited with the .exe.