UCLA has recently released a new version of a free software called HEED that helps architects in designing energy efficient homes. This supersedes “Solar” which I had tried a few years ago and been totally befuddled by. I’ve just given HEED a spin after downloading the climate data for Bombay (Mumbai) from the EnergyPlus site and I will need time to fiddle with it before I can really make good use of it. However, I can say, even now, that it’s worth getting the hang of. If only it would give us more options for, say, materials and take graphical input from 3D dxf files instead of the primitive graph-paper-like drawing window… That would really make it a killer app.

Another useful tool from the same source is Climate Consultant v.3 – also recently released – which takes raw data (the same as used by HEED) and displays it as charts and graphs. Architects keen on improving the energy efficiency of their designs must try both of them. It may look daunting at first and the choices within HEED are somewhat limited but it still gives a good overall picture.

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