Sustainable Buildings and Communities

Available Software Lighting & Daylighting Lightswitch Wizard SkyVision Software HVAC GS2000 Building Envelope & Windows BASECALC FRAMEplus Whole House Design & Performance HOT2000 HOT3000 HOT2®XP HOT2®EC HOUSTRAD Whole Building Performance EE4 BILDTRAD GBTool

HOT2®XP is a new member of the HOT2000^TM family of energy analysis software. Developed by the CANMET Energy Technology Centre (CETC), the research and development arm of Natural Resources Canada, it serves as a quick and easy tool for analyzing energy use in residential buildings. While its graphical interface is simple enough to be used by homeowners, the underlying analysis engine is that of HOT2000^TM, which is based on over 10 years of building simulation experience and has been validated against DOE-2 and other hourly simulation models. HOT2®XP can therefore stand on its own or serve as a fast gateway to research-quality analysis. View a screenshot of HOT2®XP.

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Speed and Flexibility

HOT2®XP is designed to speed up the task of characterizing a house by requiring only a small amount of critical information. However, the user may edit many of the program's underlying rules and assumptions, which allows for a far greater control of the analysis than is suggested by the main interface.

• The geometry of the house is derived from only a handful of inputs
• Derived quantities such as areas and perimeters can be edited
• House characteristics are defaulted based on age and location
• Libraries' of rules and defaults can be customized by the user

Compatibility

Because of the common analysis engine, HOT2®XP generates fully detailed house files that may be read by HOT2000^TM Version 8. HOT2000^TM may therefore be used to 'fine tune' or further enhance analyses that were started with HOT2®XP.

Accuracy

For much of the simple single-family housing stock, HOT2®XP can give results as accurate as those of HOT2000^TM or similar programs. However, as the complexity of a house increases, the HOT2®XP simulation may become more approximate. To maintain a high level of accuracy, the user may be required to override an increasing number of program defaults.

Functionality

Once a house has been defined in HOT2®XP and calculations have been performed, the following additional functions are available:

• Full Technical Report, including monthly results.
• Simplified graphical Homeowner Report.
• Reconciliation of calculated energy use against utility meter readings.
• Comparison of multiple house files to allow for the analysis of energy upgrades