What We’ve Learned from 500,000 Ratings
Ekotrope is very excited to announce that we have hit a new milestone for our HERS rating tool, RATER. Last month we officially reached 500,000 confirmed ratings! It feels like just yesterday we announced that we had officially hit 100,000 ratings, celebrating the team at TSI Energy Solutions for submitting the lucky number 100k. We’d like to take this opportunity to thank all of our customers for continuing to support us over the past 5 years, as you are the ones who made this achievement possible.
The 500,000th confirmed rating using RATER was submitted to the RESNET registry last month by Building Energy Inc.! Building Energy is located in Idaho and has submitted over 5,000 ratings in RATER. We’d like to congratulate the team at Building Energy and thank them for their hard work all these years.
We released Ekotrope RATER back in 2016 and over the years we have seen the industry grow and evolve in a variety of ways. We are proud to be a part of this network that is dedicated to achieving climate goals and continuously improving the standards for energy performance in homes across the country.
Now, with half a million ratings under our belt, we’ve come across some interesting findings along the way. Let’s dive into some of the data trends that we’ve seen over the past few years.
Findings from 500,000 ratings:
In 2020, over 200,000 homes were rated in Ekotrope. (Wow!) We saw a median HERS Index Score of 59, with a fairly even distribution of scores in the 45 to 75 range.
Minnesota and Ekotrope’s home state of Massachusetts are tied for the majority of the lowest 1,000 HERS Index Scores in Ekotrope. Kudos to MA and MI!
The most common water heating fuel type among homes with the lowest HERS Index Scores is electric. While natural gas is also a major player among homes with lower HERS Index Scores, electric heat pump water heaters take the cake among the most efficient homes.
The lowest registered HERS Index in 2020 without PV panels was 26! This was the same score as in 2019, thus showing us that this is typically the lowest score you can achieve without utilizing PV panels.
Homes with lower scores tend to have higher mechanical ventilation rates. In the low score range you usually see very tight homes, with high mechanical ventilation, with a lot of HRV and ERV to recover the energy.
On average, we see a reduction of 3.2 Hers Index Score points per kW of PV. While this is not exactly a direct formula, we’ve seen this trend prove to be fairly strong across all different types of homes.
You can learn more about these findings and more by checking out our 2021 RESNET presentation, “Data Trends in HERS Ratings- What Drives Low Scores, How That Has Changed Since Last Year, & What’s Up (or Down) with ACCA 310.”
We hope that you found these insights useful and please feel free to reach out to us at info@ekotrope.com if you have any questions.
Once again, we want to thank all our loyal users that helped us reach this huge milestone together and re-emphasize that we are committed to providing world class support, offering cost-effective solutions for your business needs, and continuing to propel the industry forward.
