To meet the increasing need for comfortable, energy efficient buildings, we have developed software to help designers and architects model, measure and compare the energy efficiency of house designs.
The majority of residential buildings worldwide are ventilated through natural ventilation, infiltration and exhaust fans. Up to 30% of space heating and cooling load are due to air infiltration. Air infiltration is a nonlinear phenomenon which is dependent on the air leakage of the building envelope and the weather-driving forces (wind and indoor-outdoor temperature difference). […]
With the background in mechanical and chemical engineering, Dong’s research interests are in the physical and numerical modelling of building thermal performance, climate change impact and adaptation, building air conditioning and ventilation. Dong got his double degrees in mechanical engineering and Chemistry at Tsinghua University in 1987 and his PhD degree in Chemical engineering at […]
The H Star portal was developed for CSIRO by a software developer who hosted the portal until July 2015. The maintenance and support of the portal is now undertaken by CSIRO. The portal has been moved to Microsoft Azure Cloud Services to improve performance and reliability. BERS Pro v4.3.0.1 has been added to the portal […]
The online HStar portal is the website that produces the Universal Certificate that is accepted as evidence a house design complies with the Energy Efficiency requirements of the National Construction Code of Australia. The AccuRate and BERSPro software send data to the portal which is used to produce the information on the Certificate. An additional […]
The following graphs show the distribution of ratings by state for new Class 1 dwellings rated between 1 January 2015 and 29 August 2016 with AccuRate and from 27 April 2016 to 29 August 2016 with BERSpro. In these periods there have been a total of 25,488 ratings completed for new Class 1 dwellings using […]
Chenath Revenue In June 2016 the final components of the fee-per-certificate scheme were implemented with BERS Pro accredited and contributing certificate revenue. Consequently the HStar portal now contains a full year of certificates and CSIRO has generated its first full year of expected revenue. It has also been a big year for building permits. CSIRO’s […]
Dr Dong Chen has investigated the Thermal Resistance of Waffle Pod Slabs – Pods with Air Cavities to identify the most appropriate method to model their performance. Recently, the thermal resistance for waffle pod slab constructions with pod heights at 170mm, 230mm, 300mm and 370mm respectively were investigated considering air cavities in the polystyrene pods. […]
Two of the CSIRO Energy Rating team, Melissa James and Michael Ambrose won the Best Paper Award at the International High-Performance Built Environments Conference, held in Sydney in November 2016. Their paper “Retrofit or behaviour change? Which has the greater impact on energy consumption in low income households?” presented the results of a randomised control […]
Michael joined CSIRO in 1992 and is a senior experimental scientist in CSIRO’s Land and Water. He leads projects for industry and the Australian government with a particular focus on residential building energy efficiency. Michael has a Bachelor of Architecture from Deakin University as well as a Graduate Diploma in Building Project Management, also from […]
The HStar portal is the website that provides Universal Certificates for AccuRate and BERSPro. Universal Certificates are produced by NatHERS software tools as the only way those tools can be used to demonstrate compliance with the energy efficiency requirements of the NCC. The portal also provides a repository for technical information on the Chenath calculation […]
We’ve compiled data from houses rated in the past year using AccuRate and BERSpro to illustrate the insulation levels used in ceilings and walls and the types of glazing installed in each State. This data is available in an interactive chart – click through to see more.
By Zhengen Ren and Dong Chen Our warming climate increases the challenge for building designers to provide thermal comfort at minimum energy costs. The acceptable range for indoor temperatures is determined by the comfort temperature band within which the great majority of people are adequately comfortable. Generally speaking, for space heating and cooling less energy […]
By Zhengen Ren, WanYee Chan, Dong Chen and Phillip Paevere Over the past 16 years in Australia, electricity prices for households have increased at an average annual rate of 8 per cent while the average inflation rate is around 2.8 per cent. This has put a financial strain on households across Australia. With the recent […]
With the Certificate data stored in the Hstar portal, CSIRO is able to extract building data to understand what is being designed. As time goes by a more complete data set will be available, however, we have a few interesting facts from the initial data collected over the past 12 months from over 24,000 ratings […]
The HStar portal was developed for CSIRO by a software developer who hosted the portal until July 2015. The maintenance and support of the portal is now undertaken by CSIRO. Check here for regular updates to the portal.
Chenath is the product of a team of people with many decades’ experience in CSIRO’s building energy rating work. The team is lead by Dr Dong Chen who is responsible for the Chenath calculation engine and the testing of the mathematical methods used to model energy performance. He is supported by Dr Zhengen Ren who […]
How well houses are sealed against air leakage can have a significant impact on their energy efficiency. Until now, little data has been collected on newly built houses to quantify their air-tightness. CSIRO has recently completed a project to quantify the air-tightness of current housing construction around Australia. Results were mixed, however, the average air […]
In 1953 Roy Muncey of CSIRO’s Division of Building Research published a paper in the Australian Journal of Applied Science called ‘The Calculation of temperatures inside buildings having variable external conditions’. Thus began the CSIRO’s work on building energy modelling using a frequency response analysis of a single zone model. Later Muncey, with his colleague […]
Air infiltration modelling Air infiltration is the unintended flow of air into a building through the cracks in the structure due to pressure differences across the building envelop caused by wind and stack effects resulting from the inside-outside temperature difference, and internal mechanical ventilation systems. With the improvements of window products and building insulation, air […]
July 2017 Caution advised: NatHERS tools unsuitable for the NCC reference building Verification Method V2.6.2.2 The National Construction Code includes an option (V2.6.2.2 Verification Using a Reference Building) to calculate the energy consumed by a reference building that includes all the deemed to satisfy requirements in the NCC and compare that to the calculation of […]