Can you imagine hiring a Swahili translator without knowing the first thing about Swahili? What if a fake translator claimed to be an expert and even spoke a few words of Swahili to convince you of his expertise? How would you know he was lying? Likely, you wouldn't. And by the time you found out he was lying, you're being eaten by cannibals in the Congo (and no, your contract is not going to protect you!). If only you had taken a course on Swahili, you would've easily recognized the fraud and wouldn't be in this mess.

Energy-modeling is the same way. A lot of people claim to be experts, but only speak enough of the lingo to get the contract, and then slap something together and claim that it's valid (I've supported hundreds of...

A common viewpoint for HVAC engineers is that eQuest is a great modeling tool but CANNOT be used for loads. Designers will typically use an additional tool more targeted to loads or may do all load calculations in a spreadsheet. However, it may surprise some, but eQUEST calculates loads before it calculates energy. In fact, eQUEST MUST calculate loads in order to calculate energy.

Consider the many pieces of information entered in an eQUEST model: Occupancy loads, equipment, geometry , envelope properties, and so on. These parameters determine building loads as well, and eQUEST does just that - quickly and accurately calculates building loads. The main problem with using eQUEST for loads is that the bulk of the reporting...

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In this video, an idiot calls a support center for help modeling a Munters to get "the LEEDS" points after seeing an ad. This is a great video for newbie's to tell them exactly WHAT NOT to say to avoid sounding stupid to other modelers.

This is pretty hard to gauge of course, but let's say we will use LEED buildings as a metric. If you look at the LEED buildings by state map we recently published, it's clear that California takes the cake in all categories, with thousands more LEED certified buildings than any other state. However, looking at the map, it was notable that the top 4 states were identical to the top 4 states in automobile emissions, as well as urban sprawl, among a number of other factors. 

Furthermore, when sorting the data from Certified to Platinum, some interesting trends appear. Most notably, California...