The HOT2XP computer program, developed by CANMET, Natural Resources Canada in 2005, is to be used to analyze building heat losses and heating costs for a dwelling located in the Denver area. Students may analyze the house or apartment they are currently living in, their parents or friends house, or they may study an imaginary dwelling.

Several items of data are needed to perform this study, including:

1. A detailed description of the house: foot print dimensions, window types and areas, enclosure construction and design configuration, and orientation.
2. Utility bill data for KWh and Therm electricity and gas usage for one year and associated unit and total costs. If actual billing invoice information is not available make up something reasonable. Consult the program help to determine exactly what is needed to perform the analysis.
3. Denver weather data. This is available as an option in the program.

A copy of the HOT2XP computer program has been installed on the computers in the computer lab across from David McCallum's office in the Technology Building. There are sufficient computers for all students in this class. You will be instructed on how to access and run this program. Screen copies, and program reports can be output to a local printer in this lab.

In the 1970's the US Department of Energy began the development of computer support programs to model the energy losses from buildings, and the associated loads for HVAC equipment. It was recognized that up to one third of energy usage in the US is associated with heating and cooling of buildings. Thus, better analysis tools offered the promise of effecting significant energy savings.

First came BLAST then DOE 2 and now EnergyPlus. These are very powerful energy analysis engines that have been developed to process extensive input and output files while solving sophisticated matrix computer models for the combined effects of conduction, convection and radiation heat transfer. While the DOE has funded the analysis engines, it has relied upon US private industry to develop the Windows-based interfaces which edit the I/O files and execute the analysis.

Learning to use EnergyPlus is beyond the scope of this lab. The DOE has a college level instruction course for learning to use EnergyPlus which is a semester long! Fortunately, the Canadian counterpart of the DOE has developed a much simplier building energy analysis program called HOT2XP which can be learned quickly and which will give students experience with the fundamentals of building energy analysis. This is the program to be used for this lab exercise.

Read the HOT2XP help file and familiarize yourself with the required information needed to study a simple dwelling. Gather the data, open a new project for your dwelling and enter the necessary information after having modified a special default library for your application. Also enter utility bills and rates for a year and select Denver, CO as the location for the weather data (in the "other" geographical region"). Run the analysis and print the available reports.

After properly initializing HOT2XP for you specific dwelling, the following output may be obtained from the program which can be included as exhibits in your lab report for this experiment:

1. Screen print of the calculation (Alt-C). This shows the modeled annual fuel costs for your dwelling along with a comparison to the Canadian standard (R-2000).
2. Basic Report. A short, 2 page, report called the House Report which shows pie charts of the modeled (distributed) components of annual heat loss.
3. Technical Report. A 7 page detailed report that gives all the entered and assumed model parameters that reflect the contents of the default library employed along with user entries in the house build dialog.
4. Graphic Output. This graph shows a comparison between modeled energy cost and the user entered utility bills. Modeled energy cost makes use of the Fuel Cost library and the associated Fuel Cost Rates which have been selected. This is also dependent on the utility bill history that you entered.

It is also suggested that your lab report include your comments on configuring and running this program along with a discussion of the results. A discussion of the results might include a comment on the sensitivity of the analysis to your building construction.

• Create then edit a default library for your project
• Enter a year's utility bills for both electricity and gas usage
• Make a year dated file for the average monthly temperatures for Denver (see program help)
• Enter appropriate data for your dwelling in each section of the program

Basic Report (House Report)

A 2 page report presenting the components of Annual Heat Loss. Print this.

Technical Report

Graphics Output (goto HOT2XP, Reconcile, Setup)