Energy-Rating-Tools-into-the-Future

Energy Rating Tools into the Future 


[Image appears to show a slide showing the CSIRO and NatHERS logos and text: The Future of Energy Rating tools, This presentation is eligible for CPD through your AAO and recognition of CPD may attract a charge, More information on CPD for this event can be found at your AAO’s website, www.designmatters, www.hera, www.absa, If you missed the first webinar you can find the recording at: https://vimeo.com/425331078, Australian Residential Energy Rating Conference]

Anthony Wright: Hello everyone and welcome to the Future of Energy Rating Tools webinar, the second in our series of webinars that are some small compensation for having to cancel the Australian Residential Energy Rating Conference which was scheduled for May this year. We’ve got a good number of people on the webinar which is great and I’m sure more will join us as we progress. This presentation is eligible for CPD through your AAO if you’re an accredited assessor and may attract a charge and there’s some more information on their websites around that and you can go and have a look. And I’d also like to mention that the whole webinar will be recorded and will be found at the web address there. I believe you’ve already got that and if not we will circulate it after the webinar.

Before I start with a bit of an introduction to the webinar, I’d just like to begin by acknowledging and paying my respects to the Woiwurung people, the traditional custodians of the land from which I’m speaking. I’d like to pay my respects to their Elders, past, present and emerging and acknowledge all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders present today, also paying my respects to your Elders, past, present and emerging.

[Image changes to show a new slide showing photographs of Dennis Claridge, Nick Bishop and Anthony Wright and text appears: Dennis Claridge – Energy Inspection, Nick Bishop – Hero, Anthony Wright, CSIRO]

Our session today is going to feature three speakers. First up will be Dennis Claridge from Energy Inspection. Energy Inspection is the owner and operator of the BERS Pro software and also developing a second package, Aridian, that I’m sure Dennis will speak about.

Nick Bishop, Nick Bishop – Hero, as it says there. Hero is the name of Nick Bishop’s software rather than a description of Nick although I can now see why he named his company like that. And surely a bit of a Hero is the first new entrant to the NatHERS tools market in a very, very long time. Nick will be talking about his new product, Hero, that received accreditation recently.

I’m Anthony Wright and in that photo you can see what I looked like before I got stuck indoors for four months of the year, wearing a suit and tie, I barely remember it. I am responsible for the Building and Simulation Assessment and Communication cluster at CSIRO, which amongst other things handles the NatHERS tools and AccuRate Software, and I’ll be speaking a little bit about the development pipeline we have underway.

[Image changes to show a faint house plan in the background and text in the foreground: Australian Residential Energy Rating Conference, Thursday 20 – Friday 21 May 2021]

Before I hand over to Dennis I’d like to just have a, make a spruik for the Australian Residential and Energy Rating Conference. We did cancel it this year. At the moment it’s scheduled for the 20th and 21st May 2021. We’ve delayed it by a year. Hopefully COVID will have settled down by then and we’ll be able to run that but keep those dates in mind when you’re thinking about your schedule for the next year and I hope you can make it along by Webex if not by, not in person. 

I’m just going to stop sharing my screen now and hand over to Dennis who’s going to pick up and start his presentation. Each of the presentations will be about 20 minutes. You’ll notice in your interface that there are two areas, one Chat and one Questions. The Chat function is for you to talk amongst yourselves and have, answer technical questions or have technical questions answered. There are three admins running around, Vbrick 1 and 2 are our technical support people, and will help you if you have any problems connecting or with the interface or technology. And Lachlan is in there as well able to answer your questions in a non-technical capacity. 

If you have questions for the speakers please enter them into the Questions section rather than the Chat section. Those questions entered into the Question section will get forwarded to me and at the end of all three sessions we will filter those out a little bit and I will direct those questions to the speakers who will answer them in the Q & A session for the last half hour or so of this one and half hour slot. So, Chat is to chat amongst yourselves and answer technical questions. Questions is to ask questions of the speakers and they will be attended to at the end of all three presentations. So, having said that I’ll hand over to Dennis and we’ll start our first presentation.

[Images move through of Anthony on the screen, Dennis on the screen and then the image changes to show a new slide showing a picture of a person covered in green leaves walking between wind turbines towards satellite dishes along a brick wall and text appears: Energy Rating Tools into the Future, 29th July 2020, Dennis Claridge/Chairman and Managing Director]

Dennis Claridge: Thanks Anthony and thanks for the opportunity of speaking today and welcome everyone. Today I’m going to outline what Energy Inspection sees as a future direction of the Energy Rating Tools. And maybe before we get started my first comment would be that we see the opportunity more broadly from a tools perspective than just talking about energy or more than rating. And I’ll talk more about this later in my presentation.

[Image changes to show a new slide showing the BERS Pro and Aridian screen displays and text appears: Where we have come from: BERS Pro, Continuous improvement, Keeping it simple for the user, Improved alignment to AccuRate, Aridian, Rapid data entry, Visualisation of dwelling, 3D modelling with 2D edits, Continuous checking of integrity, We have solved a number of complex problems]

So, to set the scene of how I perceive the future let’s talk a bit about where we’ve come from. You know, over the last five years we’ve been continuously improving BERS Pro whilst still holding true to some of its original principles. Some of you might remember Holga and so on and we’ve attempted to stick to some of those philosophies, that Holga put in place many years ago. Much of this work is like the task of re-wiring a house. You can’t see the direct results but it has improved the accuracy and alignment to AccuRate over time. Aridian, which we’ve been working on for the last three years now, is a very ambitious project and we’ve gone through a number of iterations as we’ve attempted to solve a number of very complex problems simultaneously. 

[Image changes to show a new slide showing two web pages on the right of text: Where we are today, BERS Pro is re-accredited and out in the market, It’s more accurate than ever, with a number of quirks and oddities addressed along the way, Aridian is largely complete but requires further work to achieve the outcomes we believe are necessary to offer real value to the user community and the industry, We are very excited about the future]

So, just move on to, you know, where we are today. Today we’ve got BERS Pro re-accredited in the market. As I said it’s more accurate, AccuRate, more accurate than, than ever, and along the way we’ve tried to knock out, you know, a number of I guess what would be loosely called quirks and oddities. And hopefully as users of BERS, or those that are using BERS you can [07:03] improvements. 

For Aridian, you know, from our perspective it’s largely complete but requires a bit of work to achieve some of the outcomes that we believe are necessary to offer real value to, to yourselves, the user community, and more broadly the industry. And I guess while, while here in Melbourne, life is not very exciting we do see an exciting future ahead of us from a, I guess from an industry, from I guess the audience that I’m speaking to being the assessors, and you know, more broadly the outcomes for consumers and so on as well.

[Image changes to show the Aridian web page on the right and information and text headings appear on the left: our critical success factors for Aridian, Real world representation, Productivity, Reduction in errors, We are not looking to build another NatHERS tool]

So, let’s, let’s talk a bit about I guess Aridian. As I said, we’re, we’re really looking for Aridian to deliver some substantial, you know, value to, to the industry, and for Aridian to be of value we believe it needs to deliver on a number of things. A lot of what we talked about as a team is the representation of a dwelling needs to be, you know, easy to interpret and validate by the user. I guess what you would see in a tools perspective is that it’s highly visual, very graphical, represents the building in a two dimensional and three dimensional views, and we see, we see this as key to giving, I guess, some very quick and easy feedback to, to the users of the software to validate that what they’re actually putting in to the tool and what they’re working with is what they’re expecting.

For us, it must also include the construction, what we call a construction thickness. For us this represents the sort of true dimensions of the building, a skeleton, and it implies or simplifies I should say the translation of, of drawings. Most cases we see users still working with paper drawings so it simplifies the whole inputting process but I guess in the longer term, more critically for us, will aid in the future integration, you know, with other upstream and downstream design packages as well.

[Image continues to show the same slide on the screen]

So, these then really need to translate into productivity. You know, the use of the tools at the moment is very much a compliance focus. You know, we’re very aware of the fact that it’s a lot about the time and effort for our, our customers and our users using the tool. And so, you know that needs to translate into a shortening of the time to perform those jobs, you know, and for us we’re looking for a 30 to 40% improvement in terms of shortening a what we’d call a complex house, say a two-storey house with I guess a reasonably large design, overhanging portions, and so on.

The other key aspect for us is the reduction of the ability to make mistakes. At its core Aridian understands the spaces being created and the objects attached to them. This we can use to continuously validate what the user is creating which reduces the need to go back at the end of the process and sort of re-assess what mistakes have been made along the way and it gives us the opportunity to provide sort of continuous feedback to the user as they’re extending the model. 

[Image continues to show the same slide on the screen]

And I guess the other part of this is built into Aridian is also the ability to share models between users, allows those to be shared with other peers and ultimately with customers and just provides a lot better environment to collaborate rather than just working individually. And I guess the last point on this slide for us is that Aridian is, you know, for us is more than building another NatHERS tool. It’s much, much broader than that. We’re building a simulation platform really at its purest form, capable of modelling more than energy or, or just applying the NatHERS scheme rules. You know, for us, we believe there’s a future benefit of, of thinking, you know, beyond what our current schemes are and current rules are. So, we’ve built that into our thinking around Aridian as well.

[Image changes to show two web pages showing designs on the right and text appears on the left: Where are we going, Continue to, Respond to the short-term needs of our customers, Focus on achieving the productivity gains we are looking for from Aridian, Invest in development as industry and policy direction is clear, New horizons, Integrate with other cloud based services, Deploy our data skills, Everything will be digitised, Algorithms will enhance existing processes, Users will focus on interaction with customers]

So, you know, where are we going from our perspective? Well, the first thing is, you know, we need to continue to, to respond to the short-term needs of our customers. That means continuing to invest in BERS to meet those needs and the industry and as it’s a given as, I guess, policy and its implementation becomes clear we’d continue to invest in those things for BERS is needed and obviously into the future for Aridian.

For Aridian itself, you know, as I said before there’s more work to be done before we’d be happy to release it so that we can really demonstrate that there is real value to be had in terms of switching over to it and making use of it. And then I guess the other point I’d make is beyond our sort of current scope for Aridian we see a much broader opportunity to use it to integrate with other Cloud based services. Those could be things like the New South Wales E-Planning Platform which seems to be going from strength to strength in terms of local councils adoption in New South Wales.

[Image continues to show the same slide on the screen] 

And I guess the other thing for us is applying algorithms increasingly to reducing the opportunity for mistakes and validating the models but also enhancing the type of analysis and I guess providing things like recommendations for changes to goals seen on currently the 6-star but hopefully the 7-star standard into the future. And for us, we see increasingly a world where everything is going to be digitised. This opens up the opportunity for existing homes as well. There’s some really interesting software packages coming onto the market that are starting to use things like augmented reality and other data capture techniques to really ingest the as-built environment. And together with that and our increasing use of algorithms we believe they can further free up the user from the creation of the model.

I mean there’s a lot of effort and thinking currently goes into basically just getting the job done. You know, we would like to see the focus of the users, you know, really being on the customers, being on the people in the process, not on trying to wrangle the technology. That, that from our perspective the technology should disappear, effectively, and just become part of what I guess you’re doing with the people and the customers involved in the process. 

So, that was really my ten minutes, 15 minutes’ worth Anthony.

[Image changes to show Anthony talking on the main screen and participants can be seen in the Participant bar at the bottom of the screen] 

Anthony Wright: Thank you Dennis. If you could just stop sharing your screen and Nick, we’ll swap over to Nick Bishop.

Nick are you able to share your screen?

[Image changes to show Nick on the screen and then the image changes to show a title slide showing text: Hero – An Introduction]

Nick Bishop: Yeah sure. Alright. Hi everyone and thanks Anthony and CSIRO for inviting us on today. As mentioned my name’s Nick Bishop. I’m the founder and director of Hero software. I’m here today to talk to you about our product Hero, Home Energy Rating and Optimisation. Hero’s the latest NatHERS accredited residential software package for modelling homes and apartments within Australia and today I’m just going to introduce Hero, introduce who we are as Hero Software, quickly show you the tool and how we’ve designed the energy modelling process as well as show you some of our features. And then in line with today’s topic I’ll discuss some of our future plans as really our initial release is just our first step into the market and we’re most excited about some of the future features coming down the development pipeline.

[Image changes to show a new slide showing text on a dark grey screen: Who we are: Hero Software Pty Ltd, A passionate startup team of Energy-Modellers, User Experience Experts & Software Developers, Formed in 2017, Issued NatHERS Accreditation May 2020, First public release Hero v1.0 June 2020]

So a bit about us. Hero Software, a small startup team of energy modelling experts and software developers was founded in 2017 on the ambition to improve the NatHERS modelling experience, bring a modern interface to users, offer powerful tools of automation, analysis and design to the NatHERS energy modelling community, and assist them in their work. 

Our aim is to really reduce data entry and modelling times and provide tools for users to optimise and deliver improved building designs. I personally come from an engineering, ESD energy-modelling background and I suppose this inception for Hero was really around some processes of energy modelling optimisation techniques, cost benefit analysis that we were applying to our projects, and delivering outcomes like one of Australia’s first 100% renewable all electric apartments, the Nightingale apartments in Melbourne, and our desire to kind of deliver this kind of analysis to more of our clients that didn’t have perhaps the ESD budget that some of these leading edge projects did.

So, we were doing a lot of optimisation and cost-benefit analyses for both residential commercial projects, running thousands of simulations, creating these really big solution sets that allowed us to kind of drill down on the possible solutions and really easily discuss lots of alternatives with the clients for each project. But really the realisation of that workstream was that these kind of external integrations and third party tools really should just be an integral part of the energy modelling software itself and it’s a bit slow and clumsy to be integrating constantly with third party, those kind of things.

[Image continues to show the same slide on the screen]

We also had a lot of ideas in bringing improvements to the modelling process itself that we wanted to apply. So, we’ve been working on Hero for a number of years now and in June we released our first release, Version 1, and it’s been really great getting the industry’s feedback and some of their positive responses and starting to interact with our users as they transition into using Hero. Hero’s been accredited by the NatHERS administration for use within the Australian housing market. Similar to the other tools. We are a desktop software package for Windows initially, Mac coming soon, and similar to all the other tools, we utilise CSIRO’s Chenath Engine. 

You can go and get Hero for free. Start using it right now for your projects by registering a new user account at Hero-software.com.au and downloading your free copy today. 

[Image changes to show a new slide showing the Hero web portal webpage]

Along with the desktop application, there’s the Hero web portal, or as we call it, yeah, the web portal or our website and it’s here. You can download the tool, access our in depth training course, find the user manual, contact our support team, and most importantly this is where users go to certify their projects from Hero desktop and issue their NatHERS certificates.

[Image changes to show a new slide showing a grey background and text: Why, Deliver best-practice energy-modelling features & tools to the NatHERS industry, Automate & speed up data-entry to enable more time for design analysis & improvement, Deliver a well-designed user-experience, Listen & respond to industry requirements]

So, I’d like to show you a few of the features of Hero, show you around the tool. 

[Image changes to show a new slide showing the Hero tool and the image shows a house design on the left and a data-grid on the right on the webpage]

Our initial release sets a great foundation for energy modelling. It’s a, our focus has been on an intuitive and flexible user interface as well as how to present and organise the complicated information of the model in a useable manner. So, it’s a really flexible interface that allows you to work mostly within the one screen so you’re not continually flicking between screens and drilling down different pop-ups to change an attribute. So, we really have this visual view on the left here where you’ll create your model visually and the data-grid on the right here where you adjust detailed information about your model, like its construction, insulation types, etc.

[Image shows the data-grid disappearing from the right of the screen]

The data-grid is really flexible again with lots of ways to organise and filter and sort all of your data and organise it in different ways and similarly with the whole of the interface it’s all very easily customisable so you can adjust Hero and toggle between different views very quickly. 

[Image shows a Window Library appearing on the right next to the house diagram]

The interface is full of keyboard shortcuts which are a great way of improving your modelling speeds and allow you to kind of toggle between views and improve your modelling experience and there’s a whole heap of features designed to make it easier for you to get up and running and certified.

[Image changes to show a new slide showing the Hero tool webpage on the right and text on the left: Features, Flexible and customisable interface, Multi-dwelling modelling capabilities, Automatic adjacency scanning and splitting, Keyboard shortcuts and features to improves modelling speeds, Free in-depth training package, Alert and fault detection, Improved NatHERS Window Library filtering and sorting capabilities]

A few of the other features, one of our most significant features of Version 1.0 is our multi-dwelling modelling capabilities. 

[Image shows the house diagram disappearing and then the image changes to show a close view of a house diagram and the image shows different areas of the house in the diagram]

And so in Hero you can model all apartments of a project within the one Hero file, simulate them all in parallel and certify them all together and edit them all together. And so, this really drastically changes multi-dwelling modelling within NatHERS, particularly with like requirements like average star ratings and average heating and cooling loads. You’ll find adjusting projects to meet compliance a lot easier and faster using Hero and it allows this more kind of holistic analysis of the project to take place rather than a dwelling by dwelling approach.

[Image changes to show a large apartment development design flicking through on the left of the screen and the data grid on the right of the screen]

So, here you can just see some of our sample projects of using really large apartment developments with multiple levels and carpark floors all added in. And so, we think that’s one of our really great features for our first release there. 

[Image changes back to the Features slide again]

Another great feature of Hero is its automatic adjacency scanning capabilities. Again, focussing on automation and user experience so you don’t need to be manually splitting floors and ceilings to get your adjacencies right. Hero automatically is detecting a lot of this geometry, cutting and splitting floors and ceilings together so you don’t need to worry about that.  And as you’ll discover for Version 1 if you give it a try, Hero’s really simple to use and learn with a lot of powerful user features underneath to smooth your modelling journey. 

We’ve had a lot of great feedback from users discovering all of these little tweaks and improvement we’ve made to the whole modelling process as well as a whole lot of great suggestions as well. And we’re really keen on continuing to interact with our users and be a vehicle, be a vehicle for your designers to improve the energy modelling tools and so we’ve set up multiple channels online where you can suggest features and vote on features on our website.

[Image continues to show the same slide on the screen]

Obviously energy modelling in the end isn’t a trivial task and we’re really happy to assist and help you guys utilise and transition to using Hero in your projects. We’re offering initial project reviews and any other assistance to build your confidence to get you up and running. So please reach out, we’re very happy to assist as we can. 

So, that’s a very quick overview I suppose of what we’ve got within Version 1. In ten or 15 minutes there’s not much time to get into much depth on some of the other aspects of Hero, such as our NatHERS Window Library and Wall Builders etc, but if you’re interested in finding out more you can head over to the Hero webpage and start the training package there. Alternatively, we’re doing another detailed introduction webinar with ABSA in about a month or two and you’ll be able to hear about that in about a week.

[Image changes to show a new slide showing text on the right: The Future, v1.1 August 2020, Construction templates, Heating and cooling load limits, Improved results exports options, v 1.2 and beyond, Optimisation and parametric simulation capabilities, Cost benefit and lifecycle analysis tools, Whole of house modelling, Class 1 summary certificates, Quality assurance and administrative tools, Smart report generation, CAD integration and import facilities, As-Built energy rating verification and assurances]

Turning to the future in line with today’s topic, we’re really excited to be finally out on the energy modelling market with our initial release but we’ve got lots of great plans for how to evolve Hero to make it not only a pleasure to use but also to integrate some really powerful, innovative features.

[Image shows the webpage showing a Construction Template appearing on the left of the text on the slide and the image shows the cursor going through various selections on the template]

So, in the immediate future, Hero Version 1.1 is hopefully a few weeks away and we’ll be introducing a few nice features there. One of the first features we’ll be introducing is this idea of a Construction Template. Here you’ll set up your projects prior to kicking it off, set up all of your default constructions and window specifications and geometry etc, so that when you start drawing and modelling your project they’re already assigned and accurate. And once you’ve drawn everything you can kind of adjust the non-defaults away at the end. So, you’ll be able to save and load your preferred construction templates there based on project type, or client, or those kind of things and go from there. So, that’s a nice improvement to the typical modelling workflow. It feels a bit more natural. So, I think you can enjoy that one. 

[Image shows the Construction Template disappearing and a house plan appearing on the left of the text on the slide]

The ABCB heating and cooling load limits are now integrated into the interface so you don’t need to be looking up those tables and working out your specific climate zone, heating and cooling limits. We do all of that for you so you can see in the Results Summary down in the bottom right of Hero here, you’ll be able to get a bit more information there.

[Image shows various pie graphs and data appearing in the place of the house plan on the left of the text on the slide and the image shows the results being copied into an Excel table]

We’ve also improved on a range of our Result Export features and we’re really keen on integrating Hero’s results into your reports and third party analysis. So, you can now copy and paste those results, not only the kind of results summaries but also all the tables of information and the graphs can be copied and pasted into your reports really easily. You can export these into CSV files and those kind of things into your own analysis. And there’s a slew of other features and minor tweaks and performance improvements and bug fixes and those kind of things coming in Version 1.1 as well. 

Following on from Version 1.1 we’re rounding out, we’ll be focussing on rounding out the functionalities and features of Hero such as allowing copying and pasting throughout to allow you to quickly duplicate models. We’ve got Class 1 Summary Certificates on the horizon so that you can actually stamp a townhouse job with a single stamp rather than for each townhouse as part of the improvement to our kind of multi-dwelling modelling package.

[Image continues to show the same slide on the screen]

Really important to us, we’ve started refining our optimisation and analysis tools. We’re really interested in allowing our users to quickly and cost-effectively evaluate multiple design alternatives as there’s lots of time savings and value that we can assist there. And so we want to bring in that kind of automation as soon as possible and then evolving that concept into areas that I’m sure many of you already do such as cost benefit analysis, lifecycle analysis, and make that a really standard and easy aspect to integrate into your projects on a daily basis.

We’ve started testing out our Cloud simulation capabilities. We’re really keen on bringing that aspect of Hero, particularly as we evolve our optimisation features to enable those really big solution sets to be modelled and presented in an effective manner. And we’ve also been developing features that focus around project management, quality assurance, assisting in the kind of more administrative processes of engaging with clients, keeping on top of drawings, updates, project information, getting client approvals and sign-offs and those kind of things, automatic stamping and certification, and developing quality assurance and workflow checks within Hero itself so that you can model quickly with competence while still ensuring you’re being thorough.

[Image continues to show the same slide on the screen]

We’ll be introducing more Smart report creation capabilities so that you can export and bring in more Hero results and datas into your reports with single clicks and those kinds of things, again, where a lot of time can be saved. And so, we’ve got quite a few of these design proto-types being refined now.

In the longer term, obviously Hero is really interested in the development of Whole of House, how that applies into the industry integrating renewables and the rest of the system of the house into the model. And we’re also really keen on engaging with the verification or as-built aspects of homes. We’ve got plans to really improve quality assurance and documentation there which is such an important part of ensuring that these energy efficient homes are actually delivered effectively in the field. And we’ve got quite a few other ideas such as better CAD integrations and so forth that we’re really keen on implementing over the coming months and years.

[Image continues to show the same slide on the screen]

So, I suppose to just close out today I’d just like to say we’re really passionate about this industry, really interested in supporting its development and helping our users deliver better outcomes and making their lives easier. And so, we’re really asking for your support so that we can drive this development bigger, better, faster. So please if you’re interested in what we’re doing, appreciate our efforts, we’d love for your backing and support through giving the software a go, running some projects through it in these early days, so that we can kind of continue to deliver on our ideas and our vision. Thanks.

Anthony Wright: Thanks very much Nick. 

[Images move through of various screens flashing through, Anthony on the main screen, and then the image changes to show a new slide showing a photo of MIT’s 1939 solar house and text appears: CSIRO AccuRate Development, Webinar July 2020, Anthony Wright, July 2020]

If you could just stop sharing your screen that would be great. OK, thanks to Nick and Dennis. There’s a lot of themes that are quite familiar between the developments going on in NatHERS tools at the moment. I always include this slide at the start of my presentations which shows MIT’s 1939 solar house. CSIRO has been working in this space for almost that long. So we have about a 60 year history of thermal modelling and so I came this role four years ago and have watched over kind of a process of modernising some of the tools and trying to update some of the work we’ve been doing over that very, very extended period of time. 

[Image changes to show a new slide showing a photo of three darts on a dartboard on the right and text appears on the left: 18 month Development targets, 1. Whole of House tools, 2. AccuRate in the Cloud, 3. API development, 4. Batch processing, 5. Stock model, 6. Error and fraud detection, 7. Security App, 8. Neural Network, 9. Climate Change scenario modelling, 10. Existing Dwellings]

So, I’m going to talk through some of those changes.

We have probably one of the most ambitious 18 month kind of development pipelines we’ve had in a very, very, very long time. So, in this presentation I’ll go through the kind of things we’re attempting to get out to you guys, the assessor community and the public, in the next 18 months. That includes Whole-of-House tools in alignment with the NCC we hope and I’ll talk a bit more about that later. We’re moving a version of AccuRate into the Cloud and with that we will provide application programming interfaces for third party developers. We will deliver batch processing to the assessors and stock modelling. We’ve been working for quite a while on error and fraud detection algorithms that will be built into that software. We’re also working on a security app. We’re doing some neural network development and we’re also, we’ve just finished creating climate change scenario weather files. And I’ll talk a little bit at the end of the presentation about applicability of some of these tools and approaches to existing dwellings as well as new buildings.

[Image changes to show a new slide showing a line graph on the right showing a Whole of House Energy Comparison and text appears on the left: Whole of House tools, The Australian Building Codes Board is currently considering changes to the National Construction Code which could see a ‘whole-of-house’ approach taken to the minimum standards for dwellings. In conjunction with the Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources, CSIRO has modified its AccuRate tool to meet this possible need, The tool covers all regulated services]

So, on the topic of Whole-of-House tools, the Australian Building Codes Board is currently considering changes to the National Construction Code which could see a Whole-of-House approach taken to the minimum standards for dwellings. The most likely possibility for that is that it includes the current regulated services which is lighting, heating and cooling, water heating, pool pumps and potentially PVs offsetting that. So, in conjunction with the Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources, CSIRO has modified AccuRate to anticipate that potential need and created a tool that’s not currently available commercially that covers all of those regulatory services with user inputs that we believe will be available to an assessor at the early kind of primary application stage.

The Department has contracted SPR to have a look at that tool and give it a sense check and also to compare it to some of the other tools on the market. And the report, the graph I’ve taken out of that report on the right is the Whole of House energy use for all heating, cooling, hot water, pool and PV scenarios in a particular climate zone, comparing the new AccuRate tool on the blue line to BASIX, the Zero Net Carbon Tool that Sustainability Victoria operates, and the Victorian RES Scorecard. And as  you can see the alignment is pretty good and the initial sense check has kind of come up looking pretty good. 

So we will continue to develop that tool in conjunction with the department and with developments as they are released from the Australian Building Codes Board and National Construction Code. The reason we are developing so early before we’ve seen the black letter of the law is because we need to have tools ready if they are required and we don’t have the luxury of doing that after the National Construction Code is released in 2022. So, at the moment our development is quite speculative and we won’t be releasing this tool commercially at least until there’s a bit more certainty around its need and its use and direction that the National Construction Code is going. So keep an eye out for that one.

[Image changes to show a new slide showing an inset webpage and text: AccuRate in the Cloud, Work began almost two years ago, An Alpha version (thermal only) was released in May, Beta release (WoH) to users of AccuRate scheduled for Jan 2021, API for front end developers will be available in Beta release in late 2020/early 2021]

We are also putting AccuRate in the Cloud as I mentioned. I’m going to play a video which I hope is playing OK  for you all, it didn't work last time [35:17] organised but I’m not going to talk through all of the functions. AccuRate won’t change an enormous amount from what it currently is. As the Benchmark tool it’s incumbent on CSIRO to be as flexible as possible and we think that leaving it as a kind of numerical data entry interface is the way to go and we understand that a lot of our users have quite entrenched work practices and workflows that they don’t want changed dramatically. So we haven’t changed the AccuRate interface a lot. It’s not a graphic user interface to the extent that it doesn’t visually represent the house plans and so on.

[Image shows Google maps inset on the same slide and then image shows various webpages moving through inset on the same slide]

What we have done though is integrate it better with other online tools that are available. So, Google Maps for example as you can see now, using plus codes to locate properties and basically using a lot of online tools that are currently available that we can integrate in order to streamline the workflow and to minimise errors and those kind of things and to pre-populate as much back there as we can using that publicly available data.

The Alpha version, thermal only, was released in May. We’ve currently got a very small group of users testing that and reporting bugs back to us and so on. The Beta release with Whole of House modules is scheduled for January 2021 and we have a couple of interim Beta releases that will get further and further developed as we go along. We’re expecting for the first year at least to probably release this as a Beta version to existing AccuRate users so that people can try it out and so that we can work the bugs out of the system. So, we’ve anticipated the 2021 calendar year will be the year when this will be available and the users will get their first chance to try it out and see what they like. The API for front end developers will be available in the Beta release in early 2021 as well and I’ll speak about that a bit later.  

[Image changes to show a new slide showing a photo of MagicPlan displayed on a laptop, tablet and Smartphone and then a photo of hands operating a tablet and text appears: API development, Cloud AccuRate will allow front end developers to connect online and pre-populate AccuRate’s input fields if they want to, model the building and produce certificates, CSIRO is already working with MagicPlan on a tool to do this using an iPad or iPhone, MagicPlan already works with energy modelling software in other countries, https://www.youtube.com/watch?=m2M3gWX3APM, https://www.magicplan.app/en/]

So, API development, putting AccuRate in the Cloud will allow front end developers to connect online and pre-populate AccuRate’s input fields if they want to, model the building, and produce certificates meaning that future front end developers will have a very different job to Dennis and Nick and Sustainability Victoria. Whether front end developers choose to take that option up or continue to operate the same way they have using the, an executable version of the Chenath Engine that we license, is up to them and there will be advantages and disadvantages for different developers but this new option will allow different developers into the market. We are also already working with one such developer called MagicPlan on a tool to use an iPad or an iPhone to do data entry for existing buildings into the AccuRate software. 

[Image changes to show screens flicking through and then a blank screen appearing]

Now, I’m going to have a quick try at playing a YouTube video for you all. I hope that that works. 

[Image changes to show Anthony talking on the main screen and other participants can be seen in the Participant bar at the bottom of the screen]

No, I’m sorry that’s not actually going to work but you can look at the, you should be able to look at the, I’m just going to have to stop that. Excuse me everybody. Try that again. You’ll have the link in the, in the presentation where I’ll circulate it afterwards. But you can have a look at MagicPlan. Essentially MagicPlan allows you to wander around the house picking the corners of rooms and generating the 3-D geometry and the window and door locations and so on and then using a series of manuals to present that information, to augment that information and then pre-populate AccuRate and get a certificate generated out of it. 

We’re not anticipating that this will be a NatHERS compliant tool in its first instance at least but it’s more a proof of concept that we can start to have these interactions and start to generate different tools and deliver different tools to the market. The other thing we’re going to be able to do once we’re in the Cloud is provide batch processing to AccuRate users. Batch processing will allow an AccuRate user to run multiple models simultaneously and it’s so you can model many variations of the same dwelling and compare results in the same time it now, the same time it takes to do one simulation now.

[Image continues to show Anthony talking on the main screen and other participants can be seen in the Participant bar at the bottom of the screen]

A user, oops, a user could in future run hundreds of scenarios to find the most cost effective way of reaching a gold star rating or to otherwise optimise the energy rating. One of the other functions we can deliver in the Cloud is to offer stock modelling. So, we’ve already got an existing data base of energy ratings that we internally at CSIRO can use to do this type of stock modelling but we’re hoping over time to be able to offer it to end users as well. This would allow you to pull out, with respect to private, respecting privacy and so on, pull out samples of houses that are in our existing data base, potentially make changes to them in one way or another, and re-run them to see what that effect would be. For example you might be able to do, change all roofs in Townsville to white and see what the impact on energy ratings might be. So, that will be an interesting little function that’s available as well. We also will be able to offer error and fraud detection, oh sorry, what’s going on here? I didn’t realise I had not been sharing with you so my apologies everybody. 

[Image changes to show a new slide showing a mug shot of a criminal on the right and text appears on the left: Error and Fraud Detection, Cloud AccuRate will analyse user inputs in real time and provide ‘tool-tip’ error correction advice, link to Google maps using ‘plus codes’ to remove address and climate zone error, It will eventually be able to identify suspicious certificates, automatically report to auditors (subject to Privacy constraints) and suggest inputs, Available alpha and beta versions]

Error and fraud detection algorithms are operating on the back end of the Cloud tool. So, some of the immediate things we’ll be able to do with that is provide things like tool-tip error correction, link to Google maps plus codes and link to remove address and climate zone errors. We’ve also got our algorithms we’ve been building for quite some time that will be eventually able to identify suspicious certificates, automatically report things, AAOs potentially, and suggest inputs to users as well. So, fairly simple things like if we’ve entered ten into a field it might suggest that maybe we mean 100 or 1,000 depending on the scale of that field. So, those algorithms will operate across a variety of different levels in the background on a heap of Cloud tools. 

We’re also working on a security app. So, anecdotally there’s evidence that some energy raters have produced fake NatHERS certificates, even going so far as creating QR codes that point to fake websites to validate them. CSIRO is working on a security app that will create a 3-way link between the app, the Hstar portal and the QR code on a certificate. This will ensure only genuine NatHERS certificates can be validated. Certifiers or anyone else wanting to know that a certificate is valid can download the app and have a look. There’s the potential to use that app also to feed back into certificates and do things like compliance checking and have ticker box checklists that allow the surveyors to confirm that they have validated the appearance of the image building with things like insulation levels and so on and so forth.

[Image changes to show a new slide showing a neural network diagram inset on the right and text appears  on the left: Neural Networks, Neural networks are computer systems modelled on the human brain, They can generate outputs from inputs quicker than standard computing in some situations, CSIRO already uses one to do complex slab modelling in experimental versions of AccuRate, CSIRO is developing an experimental neural network which ‘learns’ how star ratings are generated from NatHERS software inputs, This will possibly allow users to enter a small number of inputs and get an accurate estimate of star rating very quickly, Mid-2021 anticipated]

We are also working on developing a neural network. So, quite separately to the AccuRate Cloud tool, the neural network looks at taking all of the inputs that we have to the NatHERS certificate data base, and all of the outputs and seeing if we can build essentially a black box digital brain that links those inputs and outputs and dramatically reduces the amount of time it takes to generate a rating from a hopefully dramatically reduced number of inputs.

So, the end result of this neural network would learn how star ratings are generated from NatHERS software inputs and allow us to develop a quick version of the rating, of the rating scheme, a rating system. Essentially what a user would do is enter a small amount of information about the house in comparison to a full NatHERS rating and the neural network would deliver the estimated star rating within a certain tolerance or error band.

[Image continues to show the same slide on the screen]

So, that could at least build a tool that would allow people to give very, very early indications of star ratings and very early indications of whether the developments are likely to comply, and issues and so on. So, that the rating itself can potentially be delayed or, or made easier when it comes around. It’s unlikely that a neural network like this would ever be NatHERS accredited. It will likely have a wider error band, wider tolerance than NatHERS currently allows, but we’re yet to see the final results of this and work out how close to AccuRate it’s going to be. So, we’re anticipating having the first version of this ready around mid-2021 at this point in time.

[Image changes to show a new slide on the screen showing a climate modelling map of Australia on the right and text appears on the left: Climate Modelling, 1. Visiting professor Shu Chen working with CSIRO climate scientists and the BOM, 2. New future climate files for high, medium and low emissions scenarios, 3. Heat wave file (Pending), It is expected that the files will be available to AccuRate users between September – December 2020]

Climate modelling, so another big thing we’ve been working on. We’ve had a visiting professor, Shu Chen, working with CSIRO climate scientists and the Bureau of Meteorology to develop new climate files for high, medium and low carbon emission scenarios. We will also develop a heatwave scenario but that is still pending. So, sometime later this year we will release these climate files and you’ll be able to use them initially at least in AccuRate and hopefully other software developers will take them up as well. And they will, you’ll be able to model your house under a high emissions scenario at various projected points in the future at 2040, 2050, 2090 under a high, medium or low climate change scenario and get some feedback on how that building is likely to perform in the future in its specific climate zone.

[Image changes to show a new slide showing a photo of an old house and text appears on the left: Existing Housing, All of the earlier software advances are capable of being deployed to model existing dwellings if required, The neural network could dramatically decrease the time and complexity involved in rating an existing house, The API to AccuRate and apps such as MagicPlan could reduce the cost of a full NatHERS rating at sale or lease dramatically, even to almost nothing if used when the sale ad house plans are generated (ie cost is already being incurred now to generate these plans)]

Existing housing, so all of the software developments we have mentioned are capable of being deployed to model existing dwellings if required. The types of developments we’re doing with MagicPlan and with the neural network are all obviously quite applicable to the existing building market rather than NatHERS certificates. There are no immediate plans for how we’re going to license them or what we’re going to do with those but they’re being built at the moment as we speak and there is a constant kind of demand for tools that are able to operate in that existing space and don’t require a plan to be drawn [46.48] every time and so we are trying to meet that and we’ll hopefully have those tools ready in the next 18 months.

[Image changes to show Anthony talking on the main screen and participants can be seen in the Participant bar at the bottom of the screen]

So, that is the end of my presentation. I apologise that the sharing where I managed to break that temporarily. What I’m going to do now is stop sharing these slides and come back to our guests and presenters and we will start to answer some of your questions. So, I am just going to check the Questions list. It’s great to see we’ve got a really large list of questions in here coming through and I will just direct them to the speakers when I’m ready. OK. So, first question is for Nick. Nick with the Hero software would an assessor still have to go through the NatHERS portal to issue a NatHERS certificate and pay the certificate fee?

[Image changes to show Nick talking on the main screen and Anthony can be seen in the Participant bar at the bottom of the screen listening]

Nick Bishop: No, it’s similar to I suppose SV, we’ve got our own web portal that does NatHERS certification there and produces the NatHERS certificate. That is our payment portal too for the certificates so it’s all within Hero. Yep.

[Image changes to show Anthony talking on the main screen and participants can be seen in the Participant bar at the bottom of the screen]

Anthony Wright: Great, thank you Nick. Dennis, I’ll direct the next question to you. Does Energy Inspection see the potential for Aridian to be useful for other industries such as air conditioning sizing and design, PV system sizing, hot water system design and sizing etc?

[Image changes to show a “D” in a circle on the main screen and participants can be seen in the Participant bar at the bottom of the screen]

Dennis Claridge: I’ve had to turn my video off Anthony because, just for bandwidth reasons so I apologise that people can’t see me but, I guess the simple answer is yes, we’re interested in the idea of, by realising or modelling the house in its reality, in terms of the angle of the roofs and those sort of things, we could actually deploy some of the other products that calculate PV array, performance and so on, and feed that I guess into Whole of House modelling down the track as well on air conditioning, acoustics, fire rating maybe. I mean I know there are a range of different tools but, you know, take over the world with those, but how best to integrate that knowledge that we have of the building into some of the existing tools is what we’d be interested in exploring as well. 

[Image changes to show Anthony talking on the main screen and participants can be seen in the Participant bar at the bottom of the screen]

Anthony Wright: Great thank you Dennis. There’s another question for you here as well. You mentioned collaboration tools and I think that speaks to your last question. Would you be able to expand on what collaboration tools you are looking at at the moment?

[Image changes to show a “D” in a circle on the main screen and participants can be seen in the Participant bar at the bottom of the screen]

Dennis Claridge: Really I was talking about within Aridian the ability for more than one user to basically work or view the same model, the same house that’s being worked on or apartment. And so, you could, you could imagine somebody could actually be doing the modelling and they could have a mentor effectively, working remotely in these times, what the actual model looks like and feedback in basically almost real time. That’s collaboration. I guess more broadly we’ve looked at the ability to integrate with some of the other sort of project management [50.38] workflow tool sets. That’s why we haven’t built anything specifically. Those options will be available as well.

[Image changes to show Anthony talking on the main screen and participants can be seen in the Participant bar at the bottom of the screen]

Anthony Wright: Great, thank you Dennis. You are breaking up a little bit there so I might find a question for Nick while you’re having some bandwidth issues and we’ll see if we can come back to you in a moment. Nick, is there any plan to expand Hero to look at JV3 assessments?

[Image changes to show Nick talking on the main screen and participants can be seen in the Participant bar at the bottom of the screen]

Nick Bishop: Yeah, we’re really interested in that. I think Hero is a foundation as are all energy modelling tools to be using a different calculation engine. JV3 for commercial building energy modelling is definitely something on the cards. Obviously we’re focussing on our initial call product first but it wouldn’t be very difficult. We’ve been sketching out ideas and discussing with a few energy plus experts and those kind of things. Rather than producing a Chenath scratch file we’re producing an Energy Plus IDF model and going there. And that kinds of opens up a few ideas of things like daylight modelling and radiance integration and a few other types of third party tools. 

I think Energy Plus probably has also some benefits even within the residential industry as well just to allow a few different inputs, outputs, you know, ventilation flows and some of these kind of metrics that, to be available for us so that we can present, just giving those additional options. So, yeah it’s definitely something we’ve got planned although it’s probably not going to be within the first twelve months of Hero.

[Image changes to show Anthony talking on the main screen and participants can be seen in the Participant bar at the bottom of the screen]

Anthony Wright: Thanks Nick. There’s a question here that’s just come through for me around hydro-thermal analysis for condensation risk. Yes, that’s something we’re working on at the moment. We, Don Cheng is working with some academics at the moment on developing a hydro thermal model for AccuRate. I can’t give you an end date when that will be ready and when it will be available but it’s certainly a tool that we will be looking to put into AccuRate very soon and that should at least give builders and energy raters a bit of a risk assessment and risk analysis for the design that they’ve chosen and identify any high-risk points in the design for condensation.

So, yes that is absolutely something we’re working on at the moment. There’s a second question here too about comprehensive, “Will more comprehensive and adjustable ventilation infiltration modelling be introduced into the Chenath Engine as part of the Whole of House modelling changes?”. So, there’s a couple of parts to that question. I’m hopeful that over the medium term we will be able to offer non-rating modes around QA in the Cloud and potentially desktop that allow changes to window opening schedules and those kind of things. So you can, so a user will be able to play with that a little bit more and be less locked down. 

[Image continues to show Anthony talking on the main screen and participants can be seen in the Participant bar at the bottom of the screen]

Obviously that couldn’t happen in regulation mode but in non-regulation mode we would like to do stuff like that. In terms of being able to provide a version of AccuRate that allows you to enter a blower door test of 50 Pascals, we have developed a version of AccuRate that can do that. There are substantial administrative and non, kind of, software barriers and hurdles to incorporating that into the regulatory version. It’s something we would really like to do but it’s not entirely within our control how that happens and operates. So, at some point in the near future we should be able to offer versions of AccuRate that allow users to enter blower door test results and so on but whether we can allow you to impact the star rating using those results is a matter for more than just CSIRO. So, we’ll be working on that as we go ahead.

I will jump back and see if we can go back to Aridian and this might be a question in fact for all three software packages but it was initially directed to Dennis early in these presentations. Dennis, I’ll ask you first, and then I might go to Nick and answer for CSIRO as well. “Can data entered into the software graphically, can data be entered into your software graphically with the aid of the 3-D model like designPH or other modelling software?”

[Image changes to show a “D” in a circle on the main screen and participants can be seen in the Participant bar at the bottom of the screen]

Dennis Claridge: Well, it’s not, not within the scope of what we are looking at doing like straight away but we’ve spent a lot of time, you know, looking at how to import, I guess, other software package versions of exports in terms of IDF files and other CAD, CAD type packages. So, it’s definitely something that we’re interested in simply because if we could pull it off there’s a big opportunity to improve the productivity obviously. And that might also not just I guess the building itself but some other information from those software packages as well to, I guess, integrate that [56.06], you know, our users, customers. I mean we see a lot of opportunity to help...

[Image changes to show Anthony talking on the main screen and participants can be seen in the Participant bar at the bottom of the screen]

Anthony Wright: Great thank you Dennis. 

[Image changes to show a “D” in a circle on the main screen and participants can be seen in the Participant bar at the bottom of the screen]

Dennis Claridge: … some of the simulation answers that we’re getting actually mean.

[Image changes to show Anthony talking on the main screen and participants can be seen in the Participant bar at the bottom of the screen]

Anthony Wright: Sorry Dennis we’re losing you. I might swap to Nick for the moment, you’re breaking up quite a lot. Nick would you like to respond to that question?

[Image changes to show Nick talking on the main screen and participants can be seen in the Participant bar at the bottom of the screen]

Nick Bishop: Yeah sure. Yeah, we’ve got plans to obviously offer some sort of CAD integrations. I think that’s obviously pretty important. There’s a measure of, you know, what type of import functionality you want to do for an energy modelling tool. Even the well-funded big, commercial packages, if you’ve worked with any of them, BIM and these kind of ideas of, particularly in my experience, haven’t matured sufficiently to allow a lot of great integration between energy modelling tools and CAD tools. 

A lot of the time imports from BIM tools into some of the more mature energy modelling tools you can probably just do it all again faster than trying to fix what is a improper model. You know, energy models are different to CAD models. You know, architects don’t always complete things in the right respect. But I think there’s definitely opportunities for faster integrations of DXFs and whatever you can pick up good information on and perhaps, you know, scanning and making sure that that data’s valid and then trying to bring it into your tools.

[Image changes to show Anthony talking on the main screen and participants can be seen in the Participant bar at the bottom of the screen]

Anthony Wright: Thanks Nick. From CSIRO’s perspective on the question of integration, we won’t be importing, you know, DXF files or BIM files from other software packages but we will create an open XML Schema and an application programme and interface. Those software packages, if they want to make adjustments to their package and pre-populate AccuRate out of their 3-D models they will be able to but ultimately we won’t be doing that development work. That will come down to decision from the various code packages out there about whether there is a market for them to do that, whether they have sufficient users to justify the development time.

My experience has not been hugely positive with that in the past. I think Australia’s got a small market for a lot of these developers and so they tend not to find that there’s a cost benefit analysis there to invest any time in integrating with our software. That said, it should be a lot easier for them to do it once they’re OPR is available and so we will, we will be happy to work with anyone who wants to do that but I haven’t heard from anyone yet that there’s any plans at the moment.

[Image changes to show a “D” in a circle on the main screen and participants can be seen in the Participant bar at the bottom of the screen]

Dennis Claridge: I think Anthony can I just say something. Just following up what Nick said, you know, I think the practical experience is it’s not just a technical problem. It’s actually an issue about how the users of the packages are actually using those tools and how the data’s actually represented in them and as Nick said that adds a lot of complication to how to re-interpret them into an energy model and I think that’s where the practical challenges from a software development perspective.

[Image changes to show Anthony talking on the main screen and participants can be seen in the Participant bar at the bottom of the screen]

Anthony Wright: Thanks Dennis. We seem to have a good connection with you briefly so I might jump back to some of the, some of the questions for you. I’m just trying to find them on my list, excuse me a moment.  There is a question here asking whether Aridian is intended to replace BERS Pro or at least be an alternative or is it an adjunct for further work beyond simple NatHERS compliance?

[Image changes to show a “D” in a circle on the main screen and participants can be seen in the Participant bar at the bottom of the screen]

Dennis Claridge: Well, we see it as an alternative to BERS Pro. I mean I guess from our perspective we’d like to think that we can demonstrate enough value from Aridian that people will want to gravitate to it. So, that’s our aspiration and then we’re interested, as we’ve always said, interested in thinking about what else Aridian could do beyond just the energy and compliance aspects of it. So, I guess the answer is yes to a number of those things but we’ve never, never taken the position that we’re going to force people off BERS. We see it as if we’ve done the job properly it then will be attractive, you know, for people to move across to.

[Image changes to show Anthony talking on the main screen and participants can be seen in the Participant bar at the bottom of the screen]

Anthony Wright: Great thank you. There’s a question here for CSIRO too around what is happening with areas like heat bridges, thermal bridging? Thermal bridging is something that is being thought about a lot by the Australian Building Codes Board at the moment and by the Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources. I can’t say how, where that will land at this point in time. I genuinely don’t know but it’s something that CSIRO are working on. I haven’t included it in our presentation because I haven’t got any firm conclusions to give on that but it’s certainly something we’re working on. 

So, I’m sorry that’s a bit of a woozle words answer but it’s definitely something that’s of, of interest to the Australian Building Codes Board and to the NatHERS administrator and CSIRO and we’re working to see what could be achieved with the time frames we’ve got and the changes that are coming from the National Construction Code at the moment.

I’m just having a look to see what new questions we’ve got coming through. Bear with me a moment. There’s a question about charging for NatHERS certificates and whether we will get a more consistent approach particularly to re-generating certificates and the fee therein. So, I’ll start that conversation. I might hand over to my other two presenters as well at some point to answer this question.

[Image changes to show Anthony talking on the main screen and participants can be seen in the Participant bar at the bottom of the screen]

From CSIRO’s perspective we charge in a couple of different ways. We charge our own users directly for NatHERS certificates and we charge our Chenath Engine licensees, so people like Dennis and Nick, a fee per certificate generated under the NatHERS scheme to use our Chenath Engine. Once we’re in the Cloud we’re going to revisit our business models for the use of the Cloud tools at least. So, I don’t anticipate there’ll be any change to the business model for existing software as it currently stands but once we move to the Cloud we need to see how many users are using that tool and how much they’re using things like batch modelling and so on because that substantially increases our costs. 

We’re not likely to move away from a fee per certificate scheme but we may introduce kind of different packages and different ways of charging for different services along the way. So, if you choose not to use certain services you might not have to pay for them and so on. We don’t have any plans at the moment to change the way we charge for regenerating certificates using AccuRate or you can make changes to a certificate for a year after you’ve first created it. I understand some other software packages don’t charge that way but we don’t collude and collaborate in setting our certificate fees. That’s up to the individual software developers and front end developers to choose how much they charge. So, I will hand over to first, first perhaps Dennis since we had a good connection with you to talk about whether you have any changes to certificate fee terms in the future plan or whether things are going to stay the same for you?

[Image changes to show a “D” in a circle on the main screen and participants can be seen in the Participant bar at the bottom of the screen]

Dennis Claridge: Thanks Anthony. Hopefully this connection will hold up. So, in the short term we don’t have any plans to change the fee structure. We see the, I guess the, the fees to help, obviously helps us but it also provides fees back to CSIRO for the Chenath Engine development itself. So, we don’t see any short term plans but [1.05.21] you know we would be interested in looking at what additional features and functions might drive our costs and therefore where we might need to look, to actually recover some fees for those but that’s all in the future for us. So, right now, you know, we don’t, we don’t see any immediate change to the fee structure.

[Image changes to show Anthony talking on the main screen and participants can be seen in the Participant bar at the bottom of the screen]

Anthony Wright: Thank  you Dennis. Nick, do you want to have a comment on how Hero charges?

[Image changes to show Nick talking on the main screen and participants can be seen in the Participant bar at the bottom of the screen]

Nick Bishop: Yep, sure thanks. I think specifically the question was about do we charge to re-issue a certificate, no. We’re similar to CSIRO. If it’s issued, if it’s changed within the 12 months you can amend it as many times as you can. So, if you get the address wrong or whatever, or change a window specification or something like that, I think that’s really important for the industry so we don’t do that, don’t re-charge. Yeah.

[Image changes to show Anthony talking on the main screen and participants can be seen in the Participant bar at the bottom of the screen]

Anthony Wright: Thank you Nick. Now there are also a few questions that have come through regarding the climate files, particularly in relation to the existing NatHERS climate files and potential future NatHERS climate files. I’m going to weasel out of that one I’m afraid and defer discussion of the NatHERS climate files to the NatHERS administrator. CSIRO will adopt in regulatory mode any NatHERS climate files that are relevant and appropriate.

The future climate files that we’re developing are not intended to be used in regulation mode for NatHERS compliance. They are a tool that energy assessors may wish to use with their clients, particularly those clients who are interested in understanding how their house will perform under the climate change scenarios, more researchers and consultants who use our software to do similar carbon analysis for people. So, sorry I’m not going to answer the climate files discussion on behalf of the NatHERS administrator but that’s not my purview I’m afraid and I’d best leave that to them for answer. Sorry, I’m just filtering through here. Nick there’s people here who would love to know if Hero will have a back button? Will you be able to go back?

[Image changes to show Nick talking on the main screen and then Dennis’ screen flicks on and off a couple of times and participants can be seen in the Participant bar at the bottom of the screen]

Nick Bishop: Yes, yes, yes. It is coming and obviously that’s a really critical thing. In these early days we’re just picking and choosing I suppose our most critical issues. At the moment it’s got a autosave that you can tweak to whatever interval you need but yeah we’re just I suppose focusing on some other aspects at the moment but yeah, undo, redo, of course that’s definitely going to, yep.

[Image changes to show Anthony talking on the main screen and participants can be seen in the Participant bar at the bottom of the screen]

Anthony Bishop: Great, thank you Nick. There’s another question for me as well, “Is the new AccuRate version capable of generating a report similar to BASIX showing thermal energy and water indicators?”. That’s a good question. At the moment we have spent a lot of time focussing on what the report outputs will be except to be able to generate an existing NatHERS certificate for the new tool. 

I know that the Department is looking at options for NatHERS compliance certificates once Whole of House happens, if it happens, and there is certainly the potential to generate all sorts of other reports out of AccuRate. I know that lots of industry people like the way BASIX structures its information, particularly the check boxes and those kind of things and that is certainly a possibility. I spoke about the potential to have COVID compliance ticker box options in the security app that we’re generating and that might be a possibility or we could change the certificate or have alternative kinds of certificates that can come out of the, with the Cloud tools. 

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So, at the moment that question hasn’t been comprehensively answered and I think a lot of it comes down to first of all what the NCC needs are because we’ll address those first, and working out our business models and getting the use of the tool and the inputs to the tool streamlined and really test it out in the commercial market. But we’re certainly open to conversations about what sort of outputs people are looking for.

On top of that we’re also providing a bunch of kind of outputs within the tools. So, a lot of visualisations of energy consumption profiles for different rooms and those kind of things as the user navigates internally in the software. So, there’ll be a lot more feedback coming out of the software in general. And yeah, as I said, the certificate, or whatever the output report looks like has not yet finally been decided and will probably be an ongoing conversation for a number of years with this.

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So, if you have some questions about that I’d encourage you to drop us an email and let us know what your needs and preferences are and we’ll endeavour to kind of try and incorporate those in the software when we get to that stage. Now, we’re getting pretty close to the end of the questions. I’m getting a few coming through here now. So, if you would like to ask questions please put them in the system now because we’ll answer probably two or three more and then start to wrap up this webinar. 

There’s a few technical questions in here around the use of reflective air spaces based on restrictions in the National Construction Code and so on. Jesse I’m not going to be able to answer those technical questions in this particular webinar I’m sorry. We, what I would suggest, if people are very interested in detailed technical questions about NCC interactions or Australian standards and those kinds of things then I can book another webinar looking at very, very technical inputs to the Chenath Engine. So, if people are interested in that by all means email me as well and we will go down a much more technical path. I know Don’s booked to give us some technical presentations recently for the AAOs and so we could reprise those for a more public forum if people were interested in having, answer some more specific questions.

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Someone else has asked whether the future climate files can be available to users of any software, not just AccuRate. Initially it will be just the AccuRate but I hope that’s only a very short period of time. We’re still working out how we will license to the other software developers. As soon as we’ve established a licensing model we will provide it to the other software developers as well and then it’s up to them to incorporate into their software or not. There’s certainly been a lot of demand issuing one off licenses to all sorts of people at the moment to use it for research purposes and so on. So we understand there’s a lot of demand out there. We just need to make sure that we can minimise our administrative overhead in managing those licenses and make sure we’re consistent from person to person and software package to software package. So, in the first instance this year no but in the short term yes we will certainly make them available to the other software developers.

There’s a few other questions. There’s another question about modifications that allow for innovations at the building product levels, or the ability for custom materials. At the moment the materials libraries are pretty strictly controlled by the NatHERS administrator. So, to enter new material into the software requires an application to the NatHERS Technical Advisory Committee and an approval and then that gets passed to the CSIRO who will integrate that material into the software. So, right now, no there is no plan to allow users to develop custom building products within the software. If there were protocols that could govern that I suppose it’s theoretically possible but there’s no, there’s no plans in the system at the moment to provide that kind of functionality.

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Sorry I just have to scroll through some of these. OK for all three software providers what are the licensing and use options for potential users not involved in using software for accreditation, as in just delivering client services or research purposes? I might kick off and then hand to the other two presenters on this question. CSIRO licenses AccuRate to anyone on an annual fee basis. So, there’s a license fee associated with downloading and using AccuRate. If no NatHERS certificates are generated then no NatHERS certificates are paid for. So, theoretically a research user would only pay the annual subscription fee for AccuRate. Once we’re in the Cloud something similar will occur but it will probably be slightly, partly dependent on which services that user wants to access. So, if they want to access stock modelling it might attract one fee. Batch mode calculations may attract another fee and there maybe a base annual fee as well. We will take a year at least, probably all next year working out how those commercial options are going to work.

As is always the case with CSIRO we’re not seeking to profit from this. We’re just seeking to make sure we’re continually able to deliver the service and recover our costs which is for the good and stability of the scheme and the people who work on this programme at CSIRO. So, that’s our answer to that question. Dennis I might hand to you first.

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Dennis Claridge: OK, so I guess built into our model was I guess a level of sort of tolerance that, you know, there’s going to be users who are going to want to do modelling as opposed to generating certificates and in the way we, I guess, cross check whether there’s a fair use sort of policy in our heads around the use of the software, is that we can actually see what each of the users are actually doing on the software in terms of creating projects and, and running assessments. So, I guess, the short answer is that’s already within the use of the software. If somebody’s really interested in, in using BERS then I would just encourage them to reach out to us and we can talk about their sort of specific case, yeah.

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Anthony Wright: Thank you Dennis. Nick, did you want to add?

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Nick Bishop: Yeah, sure. I mean kind of similar to what Anthony is discussing as we integrate things like optimisation and Cloud optimisation services, we’re going to have to think about tiers of service. I think initially we’ll probably just be offering this service and seeing how we can use it and getting as many people in but I, you know, potentially down the line, if there was huge, you know, a thousand simulations being done, there may need to be a model for that. But at the moment Hero’s free to use and our core revenue stream we’re planning for is the, just the issuance of certificates.

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Anthony Wright: Thanks Nick. I have just noticed an earlier question that I missed for you. Will Hero include the BASIX heating and cooling loads in its next update?

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Nick Bishop: Yeah, we’ve been, had some good suggestions actually from, my professional background was Victoria, and now I’m back in Queensland, so left out of BASIX a bit, but we’ve been discussing with a few of our New South Wales users and getting some good feedback there of, yeah, not only the loads but also basic areas and stuff like that. And, you know, it’d be great to get some BASIX APIs as well into the future which is a possibility we’ve discussed with New South Wales. So, yeah it’s coming very soon, yep hopefully in the next one or two releases, yep.

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Anthony Wright: Great, thank you Nick. Someone has asked, “Can one make an application to have materials removed from the NatHERS database based on 1954 research that has now been superseded by 60 years of research into foiling Australia’s plans for a healthier net zero build in the future?”. That’s a very good question. I have absolutely no idea. I would direct you to the NatHERS Technical Advisory Committee to answer that question I’m afraid. I don’t think anyone has ever asked for a material to be removed from the NatHERS database before. So, that is a new one to me.

I think I’ve gone through nearly all of the questions. One more very early on that I’ve missed. One of our viewers of the webinar has asked whether there will be a comparison at any point between the Passive House tool and any of the tools that are out there and the outputs that are produced. My answer to that is that we don’t have any immediate plans to do anything like that. Passive House operates differently to NatHERS and we’re primarily focussed on being the benchmark tool for NatHERS and a research engine for thermal performance research essentially in Australia. So, it’s not on our agenda at the moment to do that comparison but Nick have you got any plans for PHPP and your tool?

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Nick Bishop: It would potentially be possible to export or import to PHPP relying on its kind of outputs. Obviously it’s a different package. It is, from my experience it is definitely, you know, it is, I really like Passive House and a lot of the attribute they’re going for but some of the things like overheating in summer, not overheating, but how it models and predicts cooling loads, which are obviously a lot more important in Australia than Germany, I think potentially need some improvement. And in the end it’s not a minute by minute or hourly by hourly energy modelling tool. It is more a monthly basis or it breaks those down but it’s not similar to traditional energy modelling tools like Energy Plus or Chenath that use six minute steps or whatever. So, there is a fundamental difference there in what its output are always going to be.

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Anthony Wright: Thanks Nick. Dennis did you want to say anything about that?

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Dennis Claridge: No Anthony. We don’t have any plans to look at the Passive House tools at this stage. 

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Anthony Wright: OK well, on that note I’m going to thank all of our speakers and our attendees for coming along. I hope this has been a very useful webinar for folks and there will certainly be, we’ll certainly make it available online after the presentation. I will close out, if anyone has any further questions I will leave the webinar running a little bit longer. Please put your final questions in and we’ll do our best to answer questions that have come in that we might not have got to in future iterations of the Energy Rating Newsletter that CSIRO publishes twice a year. 

If you are not already subscribing to that newsletter you can go to ahd.csiro.au and find the subscribe button down the bottom and go on our mailing list to receive updates. We will have a second webinar in, around energy rating tools in a couple of weeks’ time. At that webinar will be Sustainability Victoria presenting on FirstRate5 and Zero Net Carbon tools and the Victorian Res Scorecard presenting on its current development trajectory as well. So, anyone who’s interested I would encourage you to come along to that webinar as well.

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I’m also working on a series of future webinars. So, if anyone has any webinar topics that they’d particularly like I’d encourage you to get in touch, let us know, and we’ll endeavour to produce content that’s helpful to you and that meets your needs as users. I’m already sensing from the questions that there is a need to do a highly technical webinar on the use of the energy rating tools in relation to the National Construction Code and Australian standards and those sorts of things which is, I’m not the right person to present on but I can certainly find people to present on the various developments that are going on there. Anything else, by all means let us know.

Other than that, thank you very much for attending. Thank you to our kind speakers for offering their time and expertise on their topics. It’s an exciting time in energy rating tool development. I think in Australia we’ve probably got a bigger development pipeline in the last year or two and the next year or two than we’ve seen in a long time. I’m hopeful that it leads to a whole lot of new tools and, and capabilities for assessors out there and that that streamlines how we’re delivering better performing buildings for Australia. So, on that note I’ll say thank you. I’ll allow our presenters to leave the meeting and I will shut down the meeting shortly. Thanks everyone for your attendance.

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Nick Bishop: Thanks everyone.