Overview
The Appliances View is a tab located within the Summary View in Hero. It allows for the creation, editing and analysis of the Appliances (Whole of Home) within Hero.
The Appliances view allows you to create a range of different appliances across a variety of categories (e.g. Heating, Cooling, Hot-Water, Cooking, Solar PV etc.), edit their individual characteristics as well as analyse their individual and overall impacts on the project's operational energy, cost and emissions.
For guidance and help on the modelling aspects of the various appliance categories please see the below sections:
Appliances Setup
This section outlines the Setup Section of the Appliances View, with individual Appliance Categories dealt with in their own sections.
1 - Appliances Tab of the Summary View
The Appliances view is a sub-view of the Summary View section of Hero, which can be viewed as per other views as Maximised, Windowed and Minimised.
2 - View Selection
Quick selection to navigate from the Model categories to the Result categories of the Appliance View.
When in Model View you'll see the various Appliance categories available (see 4)
As you scroll the Appliance View, the state of the Toolbar will automatically update itself.
3 - Appliance Setup
This will navigate to the Setup section of the Appliances view.
4 - Navigation Toolbar
The navigation toolbar allows quick access to various sections of the Appliance View. The View Selection button allows you to change the Toolbar form the model categories (HVAC, HWS, Cooking, Lighting, Pools, Plug-Loads, Solar & Batteries) to the result categories (Summary, Category, Fuel, Monthly and Dwelling). As you scroll the Appliance View, the state of the Toolbar will automatically update itself.
5 - Appliance Templates
The Appliance Templates are a way to load and save preset Appliance profiles for your project, in a similar way to the Construction Templates. These files are stored on your local hard-drive and can be shared with your team to allow consistent approaches to optimising WoH projects.
Hero ships with several pre-created Default Templates file that may be a useful starting point for your projects and to demonstrate use of Appliance Template files.
Appliance Templates are a great way to standardise the optimisation of projects based on your practice, your clients and their particular preferences.
To create an Appliance Template file, create and setup the Appliances for the project in the usual way, and then click the Template button and choose Save Template file and choose a location for the template file. You'll now be able to load that file onto new projects.
To load an Appliance Template, select the Template button and choose the template file. Once you load the template file, the systems saved into that template file will overwrite all current Appliances in your project to that saved configuration and the WoH results will be re-calculated.
The most recent saved and loaded templates will be shown as Recent Templates for easy selection.
Note given the way Zones can be assigned to any multiple HVAC systems, loading a template may not perfectly assign zones to HVAC systems and multi-dwelling projects that vary from that original template and you should review the assignment of these zones and dwellings ensure it is correct for your project.
6 - Presentation Mode
The Presentation Mode feature is a new way of showing the Hero interface in a non-editable View-only mode that is designed to help facilitate cleaner, simpler and understandable presentation of Hero projects for review, client presentation and report exports.
When you turn on Presentation Mode, the Appliances View becomes non-editable in that none of the modelling information can be changed, and the various different specifications and types available become hidden with only the current specification shown.
Note this setting is saved into the Hero file, so if you notice you can't edit anything in Hero, you're probably in Presentation Mode!
7 - Export options
A variety of Export options are included in the Appliances View for users to utilise, including:
- Export to PDF - will export the current Appliance View into a very useful PDF Report for client reporting.
- Export to Image (to Clipboard) - overall project or per category snapshots
- Export Hourly Results to Clipboard or CSV
- Export ABCB WoH DTS Calculator - if utilisiing WoH DTS you can export the current appliances directly to a pre-populated ABCB WoH DTS Excel Calculator
Prior to exporting to a Report, consider turning on Presentation Mode to show the view as a clean, simplified layout of your Project that is more readily understandable for your client in terms of what specifications are required for the job.
8 - Whole of Home Rating Alerts
Warning label may be shown for your project if you haven't entered sufficient information to complete the Whole of Rating calculation.
This might include a lack of Thermal Simulation data for the Whole of Home profiles (you must run another simulation after enabling Appliances to produce the 2x WoH Chenath simulation data that feeds into the HVAC calculations); or invalid information (such as an invalid STC for a hot-water service); or a missing required category (such as having no Hot-Water system); or an unallocated Dwelling (all categories) or Conditioned Zone (HVAC only) for a specific category.
Setup Section
At the top of the Appliances View in Hero there are a range of settings and set-up data available for your project, which are detailed below.
These settings will typically be saved into the Hero project file and restored on loading, and saved as user preferences for any new projects created.
9 - Regulatory Mode
This setting is the same as the Regulatory Mode setting available in the Project Details tab of the Data-Grid and allows a user to toggle on and off NatHERS Regulatory Mode for the project.
A project must be calculated and saved in Regulatory Mode for it to be certifiable on the Hero Web Portal for the production of NatHERS WoH Certificates (along with WoH Certificate setting as per below).
In Non-Regulatory mode, several additional options are opened up for user entry across the Appliance categories beyond the NatHERS regulatory requirement such as the ability to specify different Plug-Load appliance loads to better match actual project energy-demand, and further capabilities will be added into this non-regulatory mode in future.
10 - NatHERS Profile
This setting is the same as the NatHERS Profile setting available in the Project Details tab of the Data-Grid and allows a user to change a project from utilising the NatHERS 2019 (i.e. pre NCC 2022) or the new NatHERS 2022 (i.e. NCC 2022) framework.
You can only produce valid NatHERS Whole of Home certificates using a NatHERS 2022 profile, however you are welcome to utilise the Appliances feature in Hero even for NatHERS 2019 projects for further benefit for your projects and clients.
Note WoH Ratings produced in 2019 profile will vary from 2022 profiles due to the changes in weather-files, occupancy profiles and other settings.
For more information see: NatHERS Profiles (2019 & 2022)
11 - Enable Appliances (WoH)
This setting turns on Appliances for the current project and will automatically most appliances categories in their default form.
When this setting is on, the Hero interface will now show the Whole of Home results (e.g. the WoH Rating, Energy, Running-Cost and Emissions) and when you hit the Run Simulation button, it will now run a further2 x Chenath simulations in parallel with the Thermal-Fabric (Star-Rating) simulation (and any Thermal-Comfort profile if enabled) to produce the required thermal-result data that are utilised for the HVAC energy calculations in the WoH rating.
You can turn the Appliances setting off without losing any of the Appliances created for the Project until they're required again. Turning this setting off will then not run the 2x WoH Chenath simulations and is a useful feature to use when solely focusing on the thermal-fabric (i.e. star-rating) optimisation and analysis of a job, to avoid unnecessary WoH Chenath simulations. You can then turn the Appliances setting back on when required.
For more information on the Chenath WoH profiles and simulations, see: HVAC Appliances
12 - Generate WoH Certificate
This setting is required to generate a NatHERS WoH Certificate on the Hero Web Portal. If the setting is off, a Thermal Fabric only NatHERS Certificate will be generated upon Web Portal upload.
You can turn this setting off if you are not needing to achieve NatHERS WoH compliance such as for projects in NSW using BASIX, or when utilising alternative WoH Compliance pathways such as the DTS Element method, or for NCC2019 projects (the setting will be disabled in this case regardless).
We encourage you to utilise the Appliances feature regardless of compliance requirement to help your clients and provide greater value for your services.
Note that the Hero interface will show "Non-Compliant" design styles over your WoH Results is this setting off.
13 - Number of Occupants
Many of the Whole of Home category energy loads (such as for Plug Loads and Cooking) are based on the number of occupants calculated based on floor area as per the WoH Methodology. The value is shown in this field for information purposes and cannot be currently changed in Hero (future consideration for non-regulatory mode).
14 - Fuel Tariffs
This field shows the current Fuel Tariff profiel used for the site. For Hero v4.0 this is locked at the NatHERS WoH Defaults on a state by state basis. This currently cannot be changed in Hero (future consideration for non-regulatory mode).
15 - WoH DTS calculation
This setting allows you to enable a Whole of Home (WoH) Deemed-to-Satisfy (DTS) assessment for your project. The DTS WoH compliance pathway offers an alternative to NatHERS WoH Compliance and is not predicated on the Thermal Star-Rating of the project. When this setting is enabled, Hero will automatically calculate and assess the DTS score and compliance requirements for the site and include a "DTS Compliant" or "DTS Non-Compliant" icon in the WoH Results section. You can then export the project information directly to the ABCB's WoH DTS Excel calculator for certification purposes. For more information please see: NCC DTS WoH Compliance.
Further Settings
16 - Auto-calculate WoH
The Whole of Home calculations in Hero have been integrated in a very fast and efficient method, and therefore by default when the Auto-calculate WoH setting is enabled, upon any change in an Appliance (e.g. adjusting the HVAC star-rating or the capacity of a PV system) Hero will fully re-calculate the Whole of Home Rating, energy, cost and emissions values.
For most projects, you will generally not notice any appreciable delay in the changing of the value and the update of the WoH rating values. However if you would like to avoid these automatic recalculations, such as for very large multi-dwelling projects, or doing continous updates of a model or using an older computer, you may wish to turn this setting off.
When the setting is turned, a Calculate button appears on the Whole of Home toolbar. After completing the required model changes, you click the Calculate button and the WoH results are recalculated and updated.
17 - Show individual category results
This setting allows a user to see the individual results of each category within their respective views (e.g. see the individual HVAC results within the HVAC category). You can turn this setting off to reduce the amount of information shown in the view.
18 - Results unit
This setting allows a user to show the Appliance Energy, Running-Cost and Emission results on an Annual (per year) basis or a daily average basis depending on user and project preference. In general the NatHERS WoH methodology has been developed around an annual result, but viewing the daily electricity usage and cost may be more understandable and relatable to clients and occupants.
19 - Multidwelling results
This setting allows a user to adjust how the Appliance results are shown across the interface for Multi-dwelling projects depending on user and project preference. This includes the stated Energy, Running-Cost and Emissions values shown in the Status-bar Results and Appliance View.
When using "Average", the overall energy, running-cost and emission results will be shown as a per dwelling average, whereas when in "Total" setting, the overall project total energy, running-cost and emissions of all dwellings will be presented across the interface.
20 - Hourly results
The NatHERS Whole of Home methodology reflects the annual hourly methodology of the Thermal-Fabric Star-Ratings, with each appliance having a 8760 hour energy profile calculated for it, along with a similar running-cost hourly profile and emission profile.
The Hourly Results settings allow a user to turn on and off the retention of these Hourly Results after a WoH Calculation has been performed - which is required for those results to be seen in the Hourly Results Viewer or exported in any Hero Data exports.
This setting can be turned off if these features are not required, and can assist with performance issues particularly for very large multi-dwelling projects where a substantial amount of hourly-results can be created (e.g. every appliance for every dwelling, along with dwelling and project averages of each appliance category are created for energy, cost and emissions!).
The Save Hourly Results checkbox allows a user to save the Hourly WoH Results into the Hero file, which means it is available for data extraction and third-party use.
This setting typically can be left Off for most projects as a Whole of Home calculation is performed automatically upon loading a Hero file into the interface anyway, and the calculation in general is so quick that having the results saved into the file is generally unnecessary.
Having the setting on will typically increase the save file size, particularly for large multi-dwelling projects. However it can be useful for third-party data export and further analysis to be available in the save-file.
21 - Show comments
This setting allows a User to toggle on and off the visibility and use of the Comments section inside the Appliances View.
The Comment sections allow a signed-in user to add their own descriptions, comments and further information to the file to support analysis, client understanding, communication and analysis. You can use these sections to suggest your own recommendations, or specific products and show these in your Hero reports to communicate to your clients.
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