- HEED: Home Energy Efficient Design [HEED 4 (Build 17) August 31, 2011]
-
This new easy-to-use program shows you how much energy and money you can save by making various Design or Remodeling changes to your home. You can easily draw in the floorplan of your own house, then click and drag your windows to their correct location. You can select from lists of standard wall and roof construction. This version adds a number of new features including allowing changes to electric and gas utility rates, adding rates for oil and propane, allowing pollution data to be revised, allowing attic radiant barriers to be added or removed, offering operable shading, improving the thermal mass algorithm (admittance factor), and solving a problem with windows. Climate data is available for over one thousand locations around the world. (See READ-EPW for details.) For Advanced Users there are more detailed design data input options and output display graphics from the original SOLAR-5. HEED self-installs on stand alone non-networked Windows 95 and higher operating systems and on Macintosh OS X. HEED is also available in Spanish. See the HEED page for more details.
- Go To HEED Page
- SOLAR-5.7 (Now replaced by HEED) (generation 8 released June, 2000 [developed initially in 1976]) [over 10,273 downloads 2000 to 2005]
-
Displays 3-D plots of hourly energy performance for the whole building or for any of 16 different components. It also plots heat flow into/out of thermal mass, and indoor air temperature, output of the HVAC system, cost of electricity and heating fuel, and the corresponding amount of air pollution. It uses hour-by-hour weather data, and can call RATES in the background to calculate detailed electricity costs. It has many special commands like overlay, post-it, and compare. It also includes for California’s major electric and gas utilities which shows ratepayers a detailed picture of their energy costs. A manual for RATES is included in WordPerfect format.
- Downloads no longer available. Solar5 is now contained in HEED.
- CLIMATE CONSULTANT 5
-
Version 5.0 added a number of new features to those in the prior version of Climate Consultant 4 including three additional Comfort Models: ASHARE Handbook 2005, ASHRAE Standard 55, and Adaptive Comfort. It now comes with climate data for all of California’s 16 climate zones, but climate data is also available for over two thousand locations from the EnergyPlus web site. (See READ-EPW for details.) A web-based dynamic graphic tutorial explaining the Psychrometric Chart and how it applies to human thermal comfort and to HVAC systems design is also available on this web site.
- Download Climate Consultant 5.3 Beta [For Windows](30 MB)
- Download Climate Consultant 5.3 Beta [For Mac](12 MB)
- Download Climate Consultant 5.2 [For Windows](29 MB)
- Download Climate Consultant 5.2 [For Mac](12 MB)
- Download Climate Consultant 5.1 [For Windows](29 MB)
- Download Climate Consultant 5.1 [For Mac](12 MB)
- Climate Consultant 5.3 Beta (Build 1, January 10, 2012): This is a Beta release of our next version.
- Climate Consultant 5.2 (Build 2, October 25, 2011): This version of Climate Consultant allows the user to save project data to files that can be opened in a later sessions. Project data is also automatically saved when exiting Climate Consultant. Project data includes the name of the EPW weather file as well as all design decisions such as Comfort Model choices, criteria values, and data on fins, overhangs and obstructions.
- Climate Consultant 5.1 (Build 2, June 8, 2011): There are a number of new features in Version 5.1 such as additions to the Sun Shading plot to allow the user to click and drag shading masks for fins and overhangs. There are shading overlays for distant objects (trees, buildings) or nearby objects (chimneys). The number of unshaded hours when shading is needed, when solar gain is needed, and when solar gain is not useful, as modified by the shading of remote objects, fins and overhangs is calculated and displayed. A plot of radiation on a tilted surface (such as a solar collector) is now shown on the Radiation Range Chart and Tilted Surface Radiation is a plot option on the Time Table and 3D Charts. A new option added to the Psychrometric Chart displays a single day as hourly points in sequence which allows users to see in fine grain the daily evolution of temperature and humidity. This new Version 5.1 also fixes some bugs in Version 5.0 (including counts of comfortable hours for Passive Solar Direct Gain zones, the Natural Ventilation Zone, and the Wind Protection Zone).
- NOTE: Vista and Windows 7 users have been able to install and run it successfully if they are the designated Systems Administrator (go to Settings, Control Panel, Users) and if you are not on a network or behind a firewall. If you are running on a network, see your systems administrator for permission to install it. Vista installation problems may be solved if users lower their level of security. Here is a workaround. When you install the program, explicitly change the target directory to C:\CC5 in order to bypass the C:\Program Files security restriction, then the installation should finish without error. Please let us know if you have questions.
- PSYCHROMETRIC CHART TUTORIAL [UPDATED - September 18, 2008]
-
The Psychrometric Chart Tutorial is a dynamic graphic and audio presentation that shows the relationship between air temperature and humidity, and how this influences human thermal comfort. It is written in Flash and you can download a copy below. If you do not already have it you will also need to download the free Flash Player from the link below.
- PsyChartTutorial [Released September 15, 2008] (After downloading the PsyChart.zip file, open the file and then open the PsyChart.html file.)
- Download the Flash Player at www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/
- CLIMATE DATA
- Climate Data for HEED and Climate Consultant is available for over one thousand locations around the world on the EnergyPlus web site. (See READ-EPW for details.)
- OLDER TMY FORMAT CLIMATE DATA
- HEED and Climate Consultant no longer use TMY format data. We have written a conversion Excel spread sheet that will convert these large files in .epw format to the short form .tm2 used in our older programs which can be downloaded by clicking the link below:
- Download EPW conversion routine (epw2tmy.xcl)
- You can convert any of the thousands of TMY2 (Typical Meteorological Year 2) data files into a format that will run on our older programs. These sites include cities in all 50 states in the U.S. and some territories and foreign countries, and are available on the DOE's Energy Plus site above.
- The users manual and any of the weather data files can be downloaded from:
- http://rredc.nrel.gov/solar/old_data/nsrdb/tmy2/
- Note: These large TMY2 files need to be converted to the compact version used by our older programs. To convert these files, run them through a program we have developed for either Dos or Windows:
- Download the compressed Dos Version (tm2s5dos)
- Download the compressed Windows Version (tm2s5win)
- Read the Users Manual - instructions for downloading a TMY2 data file and for running it through the Windows versions of the conversion.
- SOLAR-2 (generation 4 released July, 1999, original release Sept., 1987) [over 9,668 downloads since Feb., 1999]
-
Plots sunlight penetrating through a window with any
combination of rectangular fins and overhangs. Also plots
hour-by-hour 3-D suns-eye view movie of the
building. Prints annual tables of percent of window in full
sun, radiation on glass, etc.
- Download SOLAR-2 (Windows 95 Version [July, 1999]).
- Download SOLAR-2 (DOS Version).
- OPAQUE (generation 4 released Dec., 1999 [originally released July, 1989]) [over 8,064 downloads since Feb., 1999]
-
Draws a detail of wall or roof sections, calculates
U-value, Time Lag, and Decrement Factor. It plots
temperature drop through the section. Draws 2-D daily and
3-D annual plots of Outdoor and Sol-Air Temperatures,
Normal and Total Surface Radiation, and Heat Flow through
the envelope. It was originally called SOLAR-3.
Unzip the download and install OPAQUE by clicking on SETUP.EXE, and to see the Users Manual open Manual.txt - Download OPAQUE (812KB)
