Episode Four - Instructing the Next Generation

Right now, the clean energy industry is booming, with an expected growth of 17.2% annually between now and 2030. And Sketchbox, a free energy modeling software from Slipstream, is an important tool in educating the next generation. 

 

In our latest podcast episode, Renee talks to Ben Heymer, Gabi Kim, and Jim Reichling—two Slipstreamers involved in the creation and ongoing development of Sketchbox and an educator who uses Sketchbox in his classroom (respectively)—about the benefits of the software and how educators use it to teach energy modeling to their students.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Welcome back to Climate Spaces.
My name is Renee Pogue fromthe vibrant and verdant city of
Atlanta, Georgia, and I'll be yourguide throughout this episode.
Right now, the clean energy industryis booming with an expected growth of
17.2% annually between now and 2030.
This presents an excitingopportunity for young people to

(00:22):
dive into new and emerging careers.
Sketchbox, a free energy modeling softwarefrom Slipstream can be an important
tool in educating the next generation.
Whether students are learning aboutconstruction, HVAC, physics, or computer
science, instructors can include Sketchboxas a part of their teaching toolkit to
show how building designers use energymodeling to plan more sustainable

(00:45):
and energy-efficient buildings.
In today's conversation, we're gonna goover the creation and ongoing development
of Sketchbox as a teaching tool with twoSlipstreamers who have extensive knowledge
about the software and an educatorwho uses Sketchbox in his classroom.
So, let's jump in.

(01:09):
So, if each of you don't mind,just give a quick introduction of
your name, your role, and just alittle bit about your experience.
I'm Ben Heymer, I'm director ofengineering here at Slipstream.
I lead our team of engineers thatworks on utility programs and energy
consulting, and I also currently leadthe development of our Sketchbox tool.

(01:30):
And I do wanna jump in real quickand say that listeners to the podcast
are already familiar with you, Ben.
But they probably don't realize itbecause Ben created our theme music.
Oh, yes, I did that as well.
All right, I'll go next.
Um, my name is Gabi Kim.
I am an engineer on Ben's team,so I've helped out a little bit

(01:52):
here and there with developingSketchbox, and I also use it on a
daily basis in my engineering work.
Hi, I'm Jim Reichling and I teachat Madison Area Technical College.
I teach math and physics andrenewable energy, and I also work
for the Center for Renewable Energy,advanced Technology Education.
That's createenergy.org.

(02:13):
Um, and I've had a chance to, touse Sketchbox for coming up on about
three years now with my studentsas an educator, and it's been a
really great experience so far.
Awesome.
So you've all had experienceworking with, and you know, in
some cases developing the tool.
In these conversations, Ilike to start at a high level.
So my first question is gonna be whatled to the creation of Sketchbox?

(02:37):
What were some of the other toolsavailable at the time and what led to
wanting to create this separate software?
Well, I can feel that one Sketchbox reallyis the, the brainchild of our principal
engineer, Scott Schuetter He starteddeveloping this a long time ago, I think

(02:58):
maybe even as early as 2012 perhaps.
So I guess what led to thedevelopments, Slipstream is in a,
a unique position in the market.
A lot of engineers perhaps, willbuild one or two energy models a
year in conjunction with projectsthat they're doing engineering for.

(03:20):
We're in a position where throughour utility programs and, and
other work, we were buildinghundreds of energy models per year.
So over 100 for sure.
And, uh, mostly using EQuest forthose energy models, which at the
time would take, you know, 40 hours,80 hours, sometimes longer per model.

(03:43):
So that was a lot of labor that wewere putting into energy modeling.
And it, EQuest is complicated,it takes a long time to learn.
Models crash, and there's a lotof opportunity for human error.
And I think more importantly, werealized that because everything was

(04:04):
taking so long, we weren't actuallygiving our clients feedback that they
wanted in time to actually use it.
So by the time we were able to builda model and get them some results
and post-process those results, theywere already onto the next design.
They had already made their decisions.

(04:24):
So we needed a way to work faster and,there's a lot of other advanced energy
modeling tools out there as well.
You know, we use TRNSYS, iES, EnergyPlus, there's a lot of different
tools out there, but the more powerfulthey are, the harder they are to use.
And for a while in the industry there'sthis big thing of about trying to use

(04:45):
building information models and turnthem into building energy models.
And mostly that effort has been abig failure because it's just the
models aren't set up correctly tobegin with to make that happen.
So none of those were helping us bebetter energy consultants and better
energy engineers to our clients.
So I think that's why Scott reallywent down this pathway of developing

(05:07):
very simple energy modeling tools thatwe're giving pretty good or good enough
answers early in the design process.
Yeah.
And you mentioned a few of theother different types of software.
So how would you say Sketchbox comparesto EQuest or Open Studio or PLEXOS?
Well, I think one of the things we'vereally tried to do is make Sketchbox

(05:30):
more approachable or easier tolearn for someone who isn't trained
specifically as a, an energy engineer.
And I think that means using good defaultvalues, providing good defaults to the
user so they don't have to go do a miniresearch project every time we ask them
for a parameter or piece of information.

(05:52):
We've tried to eliminate as much ofthe mechanical engineering and energy
modeling jargon as we possibly can.
Uh, you'll still see in the tool, youknow, places where you'll see DOAs or,
you know, dedicated outside air system,but it, our industry is full of weird
little acronyms and things like that,so we've tried to simplify it, get rid

(06:13):
of as many of those as we possibly can.
And make it more approachable.
And I mentioned theBIM-to-BEM failure thing.
So instead of having peoplerepresent specific building
geometries, Sketchbox is what you'dcall a, a shoebox modeling tool.
So we're building rectangles andputting them together in different

(06:35):
ways to represent, not exactly thebuilding's geometry, but a close enough
version of the building's geometry.
And that gets people started with themodel really quickly, like within a few
minutes or a couple hours rather than,you know, getting halfway through the week
and you're still setting up your model.
I'm glad you made that distinction becausebefore I worked here at Slipstream, I

(06:58):
actually worked for a company that madebuilding information modeling software.
So I got a lot of experiencedigging into that.
And then once I started here and foundout about Sketchbox, I, yeah, played
around in the sandbox a little bit.
To get a hang of that.
So it is interesting thedifferences between the two.
Jim, I see you nodding alittle bit as Ben's talking.

(07:19):
Are there other softwares that you usedbefore you started using Sketchbox?
Yeah, I'd be happy to talk about that.
So Ben mentioned right at the verybeginning, building models in EQuest.
And my training, I'm an educator,but my graduate degree is
in mechanical engineering.
And I did a little bit of study ofbuilding energy models and laying

(07:41):
out HVAC equipment in buildings.
And so when I started teaching again,I really wanted for my, my physics
students to be able to do some basicenergy modeling with them, just
as an extension of when they, whatthey learn about energy in physics.
And so I remember in 2008 going to aworkshop outside of Milwaukee here in

(08:03):
Wisconsin to learn how to use EQuest.
And I came away thinking, I don't knowhow I'm gonna do this with my students.
How am I gonna be able tomake this simple enough that I
could use this in my classes?
And so I actually knew Scott Schuetterfrom some other activities back when
we were both earlier in grad school.

(08:23):
And he had developed at that time, evenbefore Sketchbox a, a simpler modeling
tool that worked in an Excel spreadsheet.
And that was called Backof the Envelope Calculator.
And so I started doing some simple workwith that with my students, probably
back around 2012, 13, 14 in there.
But then much more recently, I becameconnected to Slipstream and I learned

(08:44):
about Sketchbox and it was really justa great fit because this is a tool
that I've been looking for 15 yearsand suddenly there was something really
available that I could use with mystudents that could show them energy.
Buildings use a lot of energy.
I. And we can, uh, change a buildingto change the way that it uses energy.
And that was really exciting andmeaningful, what Ben said about
being able to just get up to speedand use Sketchbox really quickly.

(09:09):
I had this funny anecdotethat happened to me.
I, I wrote an introductory lesson,like my very first introductory
lesson for students to useSketchbox, and I wrote step-by-step
instructions, and I also made a table.
And the, the table suggested onthe left column, each line of the
table said, here are the things thatyou, here's what you'll do next.
And then I left that one table forstudents to keep coming back to

(09:31):
on the first page to enter values.
And then I wrote out detailedstep-by-step instructions.
And what I found is that afterstudents started using Sketchbox,
it was so intuitive thatthey ignored my instructions.
And they just read the next step in thetable and just tried to figure it out.
And in most cases, they wereactually just able to do it.
And so they didn't really need myinstructions, and so I had to really

(09:54):
think about like, how do I rebuild thatlesson a little bit to, to give them a
few pointers that I do think that theyneed because they saw the landscape and
said, well, we know how to navigate this.
And so that was just really exciting.
That's cool.
It it works almost too well.
Yeah, it almost did.
Yeah.
Yeah,
That's, it just took us15 years to, to build it

(10:16):
on a shoe, a shoestring budgetand our free time between
energy consulting projects.
What is it?
Anything that's worth doing isworth taking the time to do it.
How useful would you saySketchbox is for people who are
experienced energy modelers?
And I know Gabi, you've had a lotof experience integrating some

(10:37):
of the features of Sketchbox, soI'd love to hear what you think
some of the best features are?
What features provide themost value for people who are
experienced in energy modeling?
Yeah.
Well, I think Ben touched on alot of the benefits of Sketchbox
over other energy modeling tools.
I remember in my intern experience, I waschallenged with creating an EQuest model

(11:00):
from scratch, and uh, I believe it took melike about a month and at the end of it I
did have a working energy model, but thatis something I could have accomplished
in Sketchbox in under a week easily.
So I think the, the biggest benefit,as Ben said, is the time saved.
But also I would say from like a trainingaspect, whenever we have new members on

(11:25):
our team or interns that we're tryingto train, Sketchbox is such a great tool
as you're learning the fundamentals ofbuilding science and energy modeling.
To have kind of a framework set upfor you, rather than looking at it
a blank EQuest model and not reallyknowing how to build that out.
There's already a structure in placeand also, like Ben said, it, it

(11:50):
eliminates a lot of the human errorthat you can run into when modeling.
So I'd say those are someof the biggest benefits.
Also, Sketchbox has energy code baselinesbuilt in, so there's a lot less going
back and forth between technicaldocuments, trying to figure out what
energy code requirement the pieceof equipment you're looking at has.

(12:13):
So there's just a lot of efficiencybenefits compared to, to using
traditional energy modeling software.
Yeah.
One thing I I think is really importantfrom the standpoint of being a
tool that people can use for earlydesign decision making is that by
default we run each energy efficiencymeasure or each strategy, each idea

(12:36):
as a separate measure and provideresults on all of those things.
So you're not just getting yourbaseline model or your code minimum
model and your proposed model.
That's kind of the traditional processthat we use to do energy modeling.
Like for lead or for code compliance.
We're not doing that.
We're giving you every step along the wayso that you know exactly how valuable your

(13:00):
improvement in your glazing is comparedto your improvement in your lighting.
And it really helps focus the designerson parts of the design, the parts of the
building that really make a big impact.
And then it allows us to ignore ordeprioritize the decisions that don't
have a big impact on energy performance.

(13:20):
When I worked at a big architecturefirm, I would spend weeks modeling things
that ended up saving almost no energy.
Or I would be in design meetings talkingabout details that ultimately didn't
matter nearly as much as other details.
So we missed, we used a lot of time and,and effort and energy and money chasing

(13:42):
things that just weren't that important.
And if we had a tool likeSketchbox, that would not happen.
It, it allows you to focus on thethings that matter really quickly,
which I think is hugely valuable.
I'd actually like to just aska question of Ben and Gabi.
It's interesting as an educatorjust listening to you talk about,

(14:02):
you know, having new staff comeinto Slipstream for example, and
using this as an on-road for them.
I'm curious if there's, I'm surethere are times when something like
EQuest, for example, is better thanSketchbox for a particular application.
Does Sketchbox actually become a trainingtool to help make EQuest an easier lift?

(14:22):
In other words, it sounds just, again,from an educator standpoint, that
you, rather than have someone startwith EQuest, if they haven't used
much building energy modeling softwarebefore that, maybe you have them work
in Sketchbox for a while and say, nowwe need you to do something at EQuest,
but it's gonna be easier because youhave this other experience already.
I think so.
Gabi, do you wanna jump in?
I, I think when we hire someone,we'll train them on Sketchbox first

(14:44):
and then get into EQuest later.
My brain immediately goes to the factthat Sketchbox does have the ability to
integrate back into EQuest, which hasbeen a really helpful training tool.
I know for me, when I was learning how touse EQuest, most of the time I would start
my model in Sketchbox, which eliminatesthe step of having to, you know, trace

(15:09):
the outline of your building or intoEQuest, which is very time intensive.
And it also gives you the benefitof, at least getting the HVAC
side of things started in EQuest.
So definitely I would say thatstarting the training in Sketchbox
and then moving into EQuest, it'sa pretty natural progression since

(15:32):
the two can talk to each other.
And in my experience, is definitelyless overwhelming than jumping into
a blank EQuest model from the get go.
Okay.
So Sketchbox has really goodinteroperability with other types
of energy modeling software.
Not sure I would say interoperabilitynecessarily, but one thing we've done

(15:53):
that is also maybe a little bit unique iseverything is built on the DOE-2 platform,
which is the same platform as EQuest.
So you can take a Sketchbox model,and if you want to know exactly
how it works, you can download theEQuest files, open 'em up in EQuest.
Poke around and understandexactly what's happening.

(16:16):
It's not a black box.
We haven't, you know, made anythingproprietary in that way, in terms of the
way the, that the model actually works.
So anyone could, could diveas deep as they want into that
tool, into that documentation.
And from there, if you wanna take thatmodel and modify it and then do other
things with it, you absolutely can.
So it's open book in, in a lot of ways.

(16:39):
Oh, that's very cool.
I would like to shift gears a littlebit, because one thing that Ben and
Jim, you both talked about is thetimeline of Sketchbox, basically from
its creation to its current usage.
But at what point did Sketchboxbegin to be used as a teaching tool?
When did we start building thoserelationships with educators?

(17:00):
Well, I could give just alittle bit more background.
So Jim mentioned the Back of the EnvelopeCalculator, you know, maybe as far back
as 2012, we eventually changed the nameto Quick Baseliner, which was also a
spreadsheet, but then that ran locallya copy of DOE-2 on your own computer.

(17:21):
So that was kind of version two,which was a little bit better,
but still spreadsheet based.
Then in, I think about 2017, the recordsare a little sketchy from back then.
They're probably sketchy now still,but then we changed the name again
to Ripple and it became web-based Is,have you seen the movie Spinal Tap?

(17:43):
I feel like I'm in, yes.
I'm talking about allthe different band names.
You could see drummers.
Anyway, it became Ripple.
It was web hosted, but onlyinternally to our own staff, and
it was like that for a while, andthen we thought it was cool enough.
That we could start sharingit with other people.
So in I think 2022, we did a, afull public launch where anyone

(18:08):
could sign up and create an account.
And that's what really when we beganexploring the educational aspects of
the tool and the opportunity to havean impact on workforce development
and training, you know, a new cadreof Building Energy consultants.
Uh, so my first experiences with Sketchboxwere also in, were in spring of 2022.

(18:28):
And that was really right at the endof that academic year that I used
it with students for the first time.
And, you know, really that was,I really hadn't even written
any formal lesson material yet.
Um, I just had a, a vision in my mind ofhow I wanted to introduce it to students.
And so we just did some collaborativework with students in class
and they really enjoyed it.
And that first pass year gave me achance to see what they were most

(18:51):
interested in about it and whatkind of questions they would have.
And it really, it worked really well.
And what was interesting, I rememberasking my students that very
first class, what would happen ifwe changed the amount of window
glass on the wall of the building?
If we just added more windows?
What do you think would happen?
And there, this really nice debate cameup in my class because the first thing
that students thought was, there's gonnabe so much more sunlight coming in.

(19:13):
It's just gonna be a lot warmer.
And then I remember one student saying tothe other, well, yeah, but have you ever
put your hand on a window in the winter?
Like it's super cold, so you're probablygonna need more energy for heating or
cooling, or, I, you know, we don't,but there'll be less need for lights.
So it was really unclear tothem, what is that gonna mean?
And so it just, it really motivatesthe perfect conversation for,

(19:33):
that's what we use a model for.
There are a number ofdifferent effects happening.
We don't know what the net result,how they're gonna be weighted,
what the net result is gonna be.
And so the model is the perfecttool to try to analyze that.
And that was really back in, in springof 2022, that we, you know, first,
from my perspective, I first got achance to see how that would work.
So what makes Sketchbox anattractive tool for educators?

(19:56):
What makes you wanna useit with your students?
Well, first of all, it's,it is a really easy piece of
software for students to use.
And it's not insignificant at all thatit runs through a web interface, because
it's hard for us in schools to be ableto download software onto machines.
You know, in, in many places, studentsare using Chromebooks or their own
devices, or if we're using collegedevices for example, it takes a long

(20:20):
time to go through a software approvalprocess and to have a piece of software
downloaded or updated and be ableto continually use it in that way.
So something that's a webinterface is just simple.
Something that's free is also idealbecause we often don't have the, a
budget to support a lot of software,and we have to be very, you know,
choose very carefully which softwarewe are going to try to support.

(20:41):
It's also, in this case, it's justreally nice because it's a very
practical example of somethingthat's studied in a lot of areas.
So I use Sketchbox primarily withmy physics students and also with
students in an Introduction toRenewable Energy class that I teach.
And it's just such a niceapplication of energy concepts.
You know, students when they'refirst learning about energy might
learn what a kilowatt hour is like,what that unit of energy means.

(21:06):
But then to actually understand, Imean, buildings actually use energy
and it's actually tracked in that way.
And to see what influences thatis really, really important.
And then the great extension of thatis that in, you know, most cases you're
teaching class of students in a schoolor university building, and that's one
of the modeling categories in Sketchbox.

(21:27):
So you're in a space that you can model.
So not only you're talking about apractical example in general, but it can
be a practical example very specifically.
And you can start to, well, let'sfind out how big is our building?
What percentage ofwindows do we have here?
What's the building made of?
What influences the way that thisparticular building that we're sitting
in at this actual moment is how theenergy of that building is utilized

(21:50):
and what might influence that.
So is that what a typical assignment wouldlook like when students start to use it?
Giving these real world examplesand working together to figure
out how to solve these questions.
I think it depends a lot on thefocus and the goals of the class.
And so I think in a physics class, forexample, I might just wanna introduce
students to the ways that buildingsuse energy and what factors influence

(22:14):
that in the Renewable Energy course.
I want to go a little bit deeperand I want students to think a
little bit about the fact thatthere are green building careers
and also even in the solar industry.
For example, one of the first stepsfor any residential or commercial solar
program is really to find out what isthe load for a building and what can

(22:36):
you do to reduce that load before youstart paying for generation, before you
start paying for solar, for example.
And this is a way really toget at that aspect directly.
And then the other thing that's reallytypical in, in, in classes is that
students are really interested in.
How much does location matter?
So Sketchbox, because of all ofthe information that it's built on,

(22:56):
has really good weather and climatedata for many, many parts of the us.
You know, many cities in the USAnd so my students are really
always fascinated to know we builda building in Madison or Chicago.
Well, how does it change ifthat building's in California
or Florida or Hawaii?
Students love to put theirbuildings in Hawaii and find out
how is that going to influence it.

(23:18):
And then as an educator, what's evenadditionally helpful is that all of
those locations have built in typicallyutility rate and emissions data.
And so there's information that capturesthe generating mix in a location.
It's easy for my students to see that.
Yeah, the cost of electricityis not the same in California as
it is in Chicago, for example.
And the emissions footprint isn't thesame in different areas because of the way

(23:41):
that we generate electricity differentlyin different parts of the country.
And so really depending upon if you'refocused on climate and CO2 emissions,
or are you focused on just understandingenergy basics or are you interested
in understanding a little bit aboutarchitecture and building design?
There are a lot of different typicallessons, I guess, that you could say
that you can use in different spaces.
Quick shout out to theClean Energy Career fairs.

(24:03):
I know you mentioned that this is areally useful tool for letting students
become more aware of clean energycareer options that are out there.
And Sketchbox has been a hugepart of the career fairs that
Slipstream has helped hold so far.
So hi there, editing Renee here, andI wanted to give a longer shout out

(24:26):
to the Clean Energy Career Fairs.
Basically, Slipstream recently partneredwith Wisconsin's K 12 Energy Education
Program, or KEEP, Xcel Energy, WisconsinPublic Service and the Wisconsin Energy
Workforce Consortium to hold freecareer fairs for high school students.
And they contain different stations wherestudents can learn how a circuit board

(24:50):
works, how to install solar panels, testout drones and find out how they can be
used for thermal imaging, and even exploredifferent types of electric vehicles.
So far, we've held four ofthese career fairs and they
have been a resounding success.
If you'd like more information aboutwhere these career fairs will be
in 2025 and 2026, or if this soundslike something you'd like to have

(25:14):
at your school, I'll provide thecontact information in the show notes.
All right.
Let's get back into the conversation.
Do you feel like using Sketchboxas a student sets them up to
better excel if they were to choosesomething in the clean energy field?
Yeah, I mean, I think so.

(25:35):
It's a great starting point and it'salso a great tool in your toolbox.
As a, even an experienced engineer,it's not the only tool that I use, but
I use it a lot and, uh, I think peoplein general need to get comfortable
with the idea of using multipledifferent tools for different use cases
and different project applications.

(25:56):
So yeah, we have all kinds of peopleusing Sketchbox, energy practitioners,
also architects, engineers, even somedevelopers I think, who are maybe not
as literate in kind of the buildingscience terminology that we use in
the tool, but still want to be able toexplore, you know, really basic things.

(26:17):
So, yeah, I think so.
So it provides a good starting point.
Yeah.
What do you think, Gabi, are thereany other use cases that you know of
that you know might be surprising?
I'm trying to think of othercases that I've used Sketchbox in.
I mean, I will say in my undergradexperience, so I studied mechanical

(26:37):
engineering and I took a fewcourses on renewable energy systems.
And there was no real mention ofmodeling tools in those courses.
We would do a little bit of PV modelinghere and there, but there really was no
discussion about energy modeling, at all.

(27:01):
Hi there, editing Renee here.
Popping in real quick just to talka little bit about what PV modeling
is and if you're curious, like I wasthe "PV" in PV modeling stands for
photovoltaic (I might be pronouncingthat wrong) but essentially PV modeling

(27:21):
deals with photovoltaic cells andtry saying photovoltaic three times
in a row and I think you'll see whythey very quickly shortened it to PV
Anyways, these PV cells arewhat makes a solar panel work.
They're made of materials that canabsorb photons from the sun and
create an electron flow, and thenthese electrons produce a flow of

(27:43):
electricity known as direct current.
Since solar panels are kindof the most talked about part
of renewable energy right now.
It makes sense that students wouldfocus on PV modeling more so than other
types of renewable energy modeling.
And since we're talking about,it in a little bit, Ben is gonna
mention a PV Watts analysis.
And the PV Watts calculator is anonline tool created by the National

(28:06):
Renewable Energy Laboratory orNREL and it estimates the energy
production and cost savings of any gridconnected photovoltaic energy system.
But I'm gonna let Gabi talk a little bitmore about her experience with Sketchbox
as a student and the different types ofenergy modeling they were able to do.
Let's get back into it.

(28:28):
So I think for a lot of students,um, like I, I showed Sketchbox
to some of my classmates 'causeI was lucky enough to have access
to it as an intern at Slipstream.
And I think it, it is a underrepresentedlike aspect just in general of renewable
energy system, like in those typesof certificates such as renewable

(28:53):
energy systems or energy efficiency.
I think in general there's not a lotof exposure to what building energy
modeling is or why you would do it.
Um, so I think that's a hugebenefit to Sketchbox just because
there's such a low barrier to entry.
Like I could just pull it up on my webbrowser and show it to my classmates.
And we used it a few times in our projectswhere otherwise we would've had no way

(29:17):
to quickly model building energy use.
Yeah, I know some folks on ourresearch team are also using it to
do like planning for microgrids.
Uh, these are electrical engineers, butthey wanna know different scenarios.
What does the load look like on awhole neighborhood or a whole city?
And they can use that to kind of mapout different pathways, you know, is

(29:40):
it business as usual or is it, low-costenergy efficiency strategies or is it
premium ground source heat pump typebuildings that they are serving on this
microgrid and what works best for planningthat whole electrical infrastructure.
So that's, that's also interesting andI know people are using it more and more
for existing buildings and the planningprocess for decarbonizing those buildings

(30:03):
and moving away from fossil fuels.
So that's one of the things that we'retrying to address next is, is making
it easier, better workflows for workingwith existing buildings that are already
out there and already using energy.
And we have information abouthow much energy they are using.
Very cool.
So Jim, I know you talked aboutyour experiences and y'all
talked about some use cases.

(30:25):
Do y'all know any other usecases from some of the other
places that use Sketchbox.
I know Wisconsin KEEP isa big user of Sketchbox.
Virginia Tech, I think wasalso an early user for it.
Yeah, I guess I can say just alittle about sort of an unusual use
that came up here at the college.
A little over a year ago.

(30:46):
I introduced Sketchbox in one of myclasses, and one of the students in
particular just kind of really enjoyedworking with it and asked if there
would be some way that he could doan honors project using Sketchbox.
And so the next semester that ended uphappening and what we actually ended

(31:06):
up doing, we used a, a climate modelfrom the University of Maryland that
projects what the climate might be likein a city in 60 years based on current
- That's very cool.
- climate change projections.
And what was a really nice matchabout this is that what the climate
model does from the University ofMaryland, it basically projects

(31:26):
60 years into the future and tellsyou what current city will a city
under study be like in 60 years.
So for example, it might be that theweather in Chicago is going to be
in 60 years, it's gonna be more likethe weather is right now in St. Louis
or maybe even, you know, someplacefurther south in the US for example.
So it's actually quite easy to useSketchbox to model the energy that a

(31:47):
building used under current weatherconditions and then just switch to
the weather conditions for the othercity to model what a building in
the same city might do in 60 years.
Now, there are a couple of really academicaspects of that, because certainly the
building materials and the mechanicalequipment and the heating and cooling
systems, all of those things are gonnabe completely different in 60 years.

(32:10):
But it was still an interesting thoughtexperiment in terms of, you know, really
what is the building up against and youknow, is it likely that it would be more
energy, even 60 years from now is gonnabe more energy in that altered climate
than if the climate hadn't changed.
You know, you can still sortto do at least a little bit
of that kind of analysis.
And it was interesting for my student justto notice that, for example, we kind of

(32:32):
expected this, but a lot more electricitygets used because we end up doing a
lot more cooling than we do now, and wedon't do that by burning natural gas.
And so that was really interestingand it's hard to say how much natural
gas we will be burning in 60 years.
So that by itself was just areally interesting application.
And then I would mentionGabi and I actually had an
experience just a few weeks ago.

(32:53):
There are a number of instructors at a,a school in New York, uh, Bronx Community
College, and they are doing some nicemodeling with, uh, with Sketchbox,
introducing it to some of their students.
And that was really, actually interesting.
We got to sit in on one oftheir first classes and that was
really, um, that was really nice.
Well now Gabi, I have tohear your side of it too.

(33:15):
Yeah, yeah.
That was a really fun experience.
So based on, on my observation, most ofthose students were kind of on a track
where they would focus on like electricwork, mechanical work, architecture.
Um, so it was cool to see them allcome together in one group and.

(33:35):
All have to use like their littlebit of expertise, their thing that
they knew about and see how itall interacted in one building.
And kind of like how Jim mentionedbefore, like the discussion in his
classrooms over what increasingwindows in a building would do.
There were a lot of those discussionsthat we witnessed in this classroom

(33:57):
of like, what's gonna happen ifwe change the building location?
What's gonna happen if we updatethe energy code version this
building is following, or the typeof heating and cooling system.
It was really interesting to see thestudents utilize the things that they've
learned in the classroom and try tomake their hypothesis on what it would

(34:21):
do to the model and then very quicklybe able to see what actually happened.
So yeah, that was a really cool use case.
And I think there they'restill continuing on with their
Sketchbox lessons, so that's fun.
That's cool.
As when I was in college, you know,the mechanical engineering building was
right next to the architecture building,but no one ever talked to each other.

(34:44):
Mm-hmm.
Same here.
Am I right to remember at one point theywere trying to reduce the energy use
of a building, and so they did things.
Mm-hmm.
Like I think they maybe had abuilding that didn't have any air
conditioning at all, for example.
And then they had a discussion about,you know, well, we can reduce the energy
use by doing this, but, you know, doesit save enough to actually, does it

(35:07):
save enough to actually be worth it?
Would anybody actually cometo the building if we did that
in the summer of New York?
Like, is I, did theydo something like that?
As I remember,
Yeah, I, I believe there wasdiscussion on what would it
look like to have no cooling.
What would that look like forthe occupants of the building?
Like in a real life scenario, I guessthey were, they were talking about
like, you could open up the windows,but still that's not gonna be the most

(35:32):
comfortable for the students, less peopleare gonna want to come to your building.
So there's also that interestingdiscussion on occupant comfort, which
I think is another missing piece, atleast from my, like undergrad education.
Uh, if we did ever talk about buildingenergy efficiency, we didn't often talk
about, you know, the actual comfortof the building for the building

(35:54):
occupants and what certain designchanges would do for occupant comfort.
I believe another discussion theyhad in that classroom was also like
changing temperature set points, whichled to an interesting conversation.
You know, that's like a, a conflict thatI feel like any shared space will have.
Like people have differenttemperature preferences.
So it was interesting to, to hearthe students talk about that and then

(36:16):
also see what that would do to the,the energy use in their building.
You remembered it even alittle better than I did, that
discussion was pretty remarkable.
And they really were interested, Imean, in the way they were having
this conversation of, well, we cansave energy in this way, but, and
ultimately, is it actually a good idea?
Like what, where's the
-Mm-hmm.
Where, where are the trade offs come in?
That was really interesting to me.

(36:38):
I think they also, as I remember,they were possibly considering
modeling a much larger building.
I, if I, as I remember, theymight've thought about modeling
in a future lesson, something likethe Barclay Center, for example.
And what was interesting about that, itstruck me that, um, that Sketchbox, I
think is pretty easily to incorporatethings like demand control ventilation,

(36:58):
which I think becomes really importantin a large facility like that when,
if, if a facility is at 20% occupancy,you're gonna, you know, use a lot of
energy that you don't need to use if yourcontrol system can't tell you that it's,
you know, it's not at full capacity.
And so I think even just thinking aboutintroduction to control systems and some
of that I think was a direction that theymight have been heading, for example.

(37:20):
So while we've been discussing this,I think especially the discussion of
thinking big as Sketchbox advances,it's only gonna be used for more things.
What do y'all believe thefuture of Sketchbox looks like?
We can start with what are some of therecent updates that y'all have worked on
in Sketchbox that you're excited about?

(37:42):
Sure.
Yeah.
Well, within the last year or two,we've made some really substantial
improvements to the backend systemsthat keep Sketchbox running.
I know that's probably about the mostinvisible and boring part of it, but
it wasn't, it just was very fragile.
You know, you might log into Sketchboxand it would be down, or it would

(38:04):
crash as it was trying to chug throughall these models up in the cloud.
So we've made that much more robust.
So when you log in and you run your model,I don't wanna say 100% of the time, but
nearly 100% of the time it, it will work.
So that's, that's actually beena big project is just to handle

(38:25):
more users and more peopledoing different things with it.
So that's, that's really good.
We've added dedicated outside airsystems, variable refrigerant flow radiant
systems, heat pump hot water heaters.
None of those were in there before.
And yeah, we're working on wrappingup cost and economic analysis piece.

(38:45):
So not just doing energy analysis, butif people have information about what
different upgrades cost, like what abetter windows cost or more insulation or
higher efficiency HVAC equipment, we canplug that into the tool and get really
robust economic analysis out of there.
So net present values or return oninvestment kinds of things that people

(39:06):
can look at and make decisions that arebased on the whole life of the system and
not just the first year of operations.
So that's coming soon.
And I mentioned people using it forexisting buildings, we're trying to
make that workflow more seamless.
Uh, we'd like to integrate it withrenewable energy, like PV Watts analysis.

(39:27):
So interfacing with that so youcan use it to do like a zero
energy building feasibility study.
I guess maybe the last thing I'llmention is we've had a lot of
interest from people in internationallocations wanting to use Sketchbox.
So currently we only support USlocations, but trying to figure
out the best way to expand thatto, you know, the entire world.

(39:48):
So that we can benefit a broadernumber of people, which is harder
than it sounds, especially sincewe're using all English units in
the tool and, and stuff like that.
So that's on our list.
And I dunno, my biggest, broadest visionis I would like to use the power of cloud
computing, not just to help people answerquestions, which is what we use models

(40:12):
for now, we, we have a question about abuilding and we can get a quick answer
and that's great, but I think we can doa lot more to just help people understand
what questions they should be asking.
I'm not gonna say artificialintelligence, but using algorithms
and cloud computing to help peopleidentify the questions that they
should be asking before they ask them.

(40:34):
And having that be a part of the thoughtprocess of any building projects, I
think would be my ultimate end goal.
And Gabi, I know you mentioned earlieron about energy codes being integrated
into Sketchbox, and that is somethingthat Zack and I have been working
with a lot recently, especiallysince there have been some recent

(40:56):
updates to building and energy codes.
When there are those updates made,are those also updated in Sketchbox?
Yeah.
Yeah, so Sketchbox has energy codes, Ithink all the way back to like mid-2000s,
like I wanna say, we go back to like2006 and every time there's a new

(41:18):
energy code that's one of those perhapsunglamorous backend updates that our
team has to make to get all of thosenew energy requirements into the tool.
And then that way users don't haveto do the unglamorous job of looking
all of those values up themselves.
I can imagine that can get veryconfusing, especially because they

(41:39):
often change on a state by state basis.
Mm-hmm.
And I wouldn't say they prioritize, uh,easy reading when writing energy codes.
So especially for, for students,I think it's a, a helpful tool.
They don't need to dive into that, howevermany hundreds of page document that is.

(41:59):
Gabi's exactly right.
It's really important feature.
And my students would not beinterested in looking at that at all.
But they are really interestedin knowing about it.
And I remember when Gabi and Iwere there at the Bronx Community
College lesson, that was one ofthe things that they focused on.
They tried different energy codesand it's, it was actually one of
the earlier lessons that I wrotefor my own students as well.

(42:22):
And students have found it interestingthat the code matters and that
it matters as much as it does.
But I also was in a meeting with someother educators and it was interesting
to hear, you know, educators talk aboutcould you use this actually as an advocacy
tool in the sense of if you have, uh, amunicipality that's using a certain energy

(42:43):
code, we imagined a group of studentsmodeling a building in the current energy
code that the municipality was using andthen modeling in the most recent to say,
you know, this makes a big difference.
And if our community would adopt thismore recent code, it would really matter
in terms of energy use and in terms ofenergy cost and in a lot of other ways.

(43:04):
So, you know, we were just imaginingmaybe a, a school district is
building a new school and a group ofstudents become interested in this.
And what would it be like if a groupof students took some Sketchbox
results to a school board meetingand said, you know, right now we're
looking at this energy code and weactually would like you to think beyond
that, to think to a, a newer code.
Um, and that was a really interestingdiscussion just as educators.

(43:25):
And so I have no knowledge ofthat happening anywhere yet, but
I don't think that it's actually,you know, that unreasonable, that
something like that could happen.
So that's kind of exciting.
And so that's, uh, you know,it's as unglamorous as it may
be, it could be pretty powerful.
I love hearing that studentsare interested in them.
I'm not gonna go into it too muchhere, but Slipstream recently did

(43:47):
a study about building codes andbasically found that even when people
have the best intentions and aredesigning these buildings properly,
everything doesn't always go to plan.
Hi there, editing Renee here.
Interrupting well myselffor the first time so far.

(44:08):
But I decided I did wanna go intoit more about the complex code
study that Slipstream just did.
Essentially, Slipstream partnered withthe Institute for Market Transformation,
IMT, and the Pacific Northwest NationalLab to work on an energy code study that
was looking at the impacts of energy codeelements on buildings during the blueprint

(44:30):
and designing stage, and then after thebuildings were actually constructed and
identify opportunities for improvement.
There were actually quite a fewinteresting key insights in this study,
such as even companies that are alreadysustainability minded still have
difficulty following all of the listedenergy codes applicable to their building.

(44:52):
If you'd like to know more aboutit, I'm gonna include a link to the
presentation that we recently didwith IMT about it in the show notes.
Alright, enough of me.
Let's get back to, well, me.
So it's nice that they're payingattention and interested in how
these things change and develop.
Yeah, and I know our, our researchteam uses the backend infrastructure

(45:15):
of Sketchbox to do these bigger macroresearch studies that, you know, might
help inform policy or something like that.
So I could see maybe at some pointin the future we could open up that
kind of functionality to people,other people outside of Slipstream
that are doing these kinds of things,'cause it's, you're right, it, you
don't just have to model one building.

(45:37):
You could say, you know, what happens tothis entire city if we update the energy
code or adopt this new type of technology.
And those are really biginteresting questions.
And they're different if you're in Chicagoor in Houston or something like that.
So modeling can help with those questions.
I love what you just described and whatit immediately makes me think of is

(45:57):
that with my students, I've, we've oftenmodeled one or two school buildings.
But we could divide an entire schooldistrict and each small group of
students across, even a number ofclasses gets assigned one building, they
have to sort of, they could use evenGoogle Maps for example or something
like that to get some basic area andparameters and do some basic modeling.

(46:18):
And then we could actually say,what if our entire school district
just used a different energy code?
So not at the at a city level, butthat would be a really interesting
project for students to do, Ithink, just to understand the
interconnectedness of energy andenergy policy and local governance.
That's really cool whatyou just described.
Yeah for sure.
Yeah, I think energy codes are probablyconsidered one of the more tedious

(46:40):
parts of energy modeling, so anythingthat can make them more interesting
and easy to follow and show theirusefulness and why they exist in the
first place is a fantastic idea, I think.
The fact that my students can changeit by just, by moving one level down
on a dropdown menu is that's beautiful.
Would you describe Sketchbox'suse of energy codes as fun?

(47:05):
You know, I, I don't Maybe,um, maybe in Interesting.
Interesting for sure.
And yeah, interesting.
And maybe not fun, but maybe at leastwatching my students examine it has
been maybe entertaining for me, so.
Mm-hmm.
Maybe it is, maybe it is.
Bordering I'm fun.
I had to try.
On a scale of one to 10, how fun wouldyou consider a Sketchbox feature?

(47:28):
I know, Jim, you've done a lot ofeducator workshops with Sketchbox.
Have you seen a significant amountof growth with people adopting
the software based on these?
One thing that I think is kind of alimitation, I haven't had a chance to
really stay in touch with many educatorsthat I believe to be using Sketchbox.

(47:48):
The design of some of our workshopshas been that after students attend,
they actually have the opportunityto develop their own lesson.
Um, that then gets sent back into me andanother one of our educational reviewers,
and then we suggest some edits or not,and then add that to the, the collection
of resources that we're building.
And so I think at this point we'vebeen primarily focused on building

(48:10):
resources that people could, educatorscould use to get started quickly.
We've had good interest in our workshops.
Mm-hmm.
And we're having discussions nowabout how to make that process
actually more user-friendly.
We're actually considering possibly,instead of hosting, you know, live
workshops, we've been hosting live remoteworkshops, whether it would actually be
better for us to put together somethingmore like a tutorial series, just short

(48:34):
videos that maybe walk through lessonby lesson what educators could do.
And then possibly add to that, likea drop in session for people to talk
about what experiences they've hadtrying this and, and what, you know,
what difficulties they've run into,and a chance for people to, you know,
help each other develop the way inwhich they're using, using this tool.
And we have had a chance to do somegood outreach to different, um,

(48:55):
educator professional organizations.
So in Wisconsin we have a, atechnology education association
and a science teachers society, andwe've been able to reach out to them.
Um, and we've actually had someconversations about maybe looking to
neighboring states to try to do some, someoutreach that we could include similar
organizations from other states aroundthe Midwest actually in, in some of that.

(49:17):
So we're definitely thinking of waysthat we can build access or just
knowledge of this for other educators soit can be used by a lot more students.
So really a lot of students start tothink about, wow, I, I spent a lot of
time in a lot of buildings and they'reall using energy and what does that
mean for me and what does it mean thatI could even influence in some way?
Or as we mentioned before, you know,what connections are in all of this.

(49:39):
If this is something, a field that'sreally interesting to me, how could I
make this part of my professional career?
And so I think ultimatelyexpanding to more educators so
that we reach a lot more students.
And I think a resource likethat'll be very useful.
As Ben mentioned, expandingperhaps to an international market.
Yeah, that was actually, I think oneof the surprises that we had for the
first two workshops that we ran wasreally the education, the international

(50:01):
presence, I should say educators fromoutside of the US that were interested
in learning about this tool and, andhow it was being used with students.
And so I don't know that I would'veexpected that right away, but it was nice.
So speaking of where do y'all seeSketchbox's role in the realm of energy
modeling and energy modeling educationover the next five to 10 years.

(50:24):
I would just like to see energymodeling used earlier in the
design process more frequently.
Traditionally, historically,energy modeling is really only used
for the biggest, most expensive,most complicated projects.
And most of the buildings beingbuilt are not using these kinds
of tools to make design decisions.

(50:46):
And I think that's a wastedopportunity because they might be
putting a lot of money into thingsthat they think are making a big
impact on the building, but missingout on more valuable opportunities.
So I think democratizing the energymodeling process is a great thing.
Small buildings, you know, withouthuge design budgets can take advantage
of, of energy analysis and uh, Ithink that will be really cool.

(51:10):
We have a lot of work ahead to look at.
The buildings that do exist, especiallythose kind of smaller and medium
sized buildings, and figuring out theeasiest, cheapest way to decarbonize
those and move away from fossil fuels.
So I think those will be definitelythings that I'm focused on as just getting
these tools into the hands of more peopleand not just the green building elites.

(51:32):
Mm-hmm., I know I've had otherconversations about how it can often
be more energy efficient to retrofitolder buildings than new construction.
What you're saying is you'dlike to see Sketchbox used
for more of those retrofits.
Yeah, for sure.
And we could also potentially lookat it as a tool or an input to a tool

(51:54):
to study, lifecycle carbon impactstoo, which speaks to that retrofit.
Should we tear down this inefficientbuilding and build a brand new high
efficiency building, or is there somemiddle case there of retrofitting the
existing building that actually hasthe lowest lifetime carbon impact.
So yeah, in theory we could,we could use the tool to answer

(52:16):
questions like that quickly.
And I think, yeah, I thinkthat might be the next step.
I just wanna see this tool usedto really help students understand
that buildings use a lot of energy,but that there are changes that we
can make to buildings to make a bigimpact on how much that actually is.

(52:37):
And in some cases, the changes are notchanges that have to happen in a way
that really sacrifices human comfort.
And so I think really, you know,in education, just really seeing
it as a teaching tool to do that.
And I also see it as a way to,to help put some meaning to
some of the numbers as well.
And, I guess what I mean by that isthat a model like Sketchbox can help

(52:59):
students understand how much energya building is using, but for some
of my students, they have a senseof scale of what that number means.
We're working on some lessons thatwill help, we talk about like energy
use intensity for example, so thatstudents can, you know, say, well
this building uses this much energy,but I can see how that it compares
to another building that's a similartype of building, even if they're

(53:21):
different sizes, even if they're, insome cases, even for different purposes.
Just to be able to build bettercitizens around the way that we
use energy in buildings, I think.
There's a lot of potential for thisas an educational tool and I'm really
excited with the work we've donealready just in a few years and I
think it can really go a long ways.
Yeah, that's very cool.
I have loved hearing about thedifferent ways that you've been

(53:43):
able to use it in your classroom.
Just being able to let students see allthese different aspects that go into,
even the building that they're sitting inright now that they likely don't think of.
Yeah, we're surrounded and, andspend so much of our lives in
buildings and this is an aspectof them that we don't think about.
Mm-hmm.
But as soon as our students learn alittle bit of the basics of energy,

(54:05):
they're ready to have these discussions.
And a tool like, like Sketchbox justmakes it really easy for them to visualize
some of these things really quickly.
So it's been a great opportunity.
Yeah.
I mean, well, I would definitelyecho both of Ben and Jim's points.
I think Sketchbox has such a, awide range of applications from

(54:26):
groups of design teams to students.
But one thing that I feel like is kindof the common thread between whatever
group of people is using Sketchbox is itfacilitates the discussion of different
choices that we can make in a building.
And I think that has been one of the moreinteresting parts of using Sketchbox.

(54:47):
Like I mentioned earlier, when I used itin my undergrad career, it was a fun tool
to like get a group of students around a,a laptop and be able to, in real time have
discussions on different things we couldtweak in the model and see what happened.
I think that whether it's used as ateaching tool or more of a design tool,

(55:09):
I would love to see it be used just bymore people and become even more user
friendly so that it can help facilitatethose discussions that otherwise
would be just hypotheticals that agroup of people are throwing around.
It's nice to have Sketchbox asthe anchor in those discussions.
Yeah, I think you have a very

(55:31):
Cool.
cool perspective on it as youknow, someone who has used it as
a student and then as an intern atSlipstream and used it as a student.
Then here, got to work on it as well.
So you've been able tosee both sides of it.
Yeah, I've been lucky 'causeI was not even a part of the
industry at all before Sketchbox.

(55:53):
I think I joined Slipstream in 2019.
So by that point the tool was alreadycreated and I've got to see it be useful
in like multiple phases of my career frombeing an undergrad student to being an in
an intern here to working here full-time.
I wonder if conceptually, a lotof what we've done with Sketchbox
is try to take up a lot of thecomplexity of energy modeling.

(56:16):
If you open up EQuest, there's thousandsof input variables that all do something
and we've really tried to boil thatdown to a manageable number that are
highly important or in influential.
And not getting a perfectanswer, but getting a pretty good
answer or good enough answer.
And to be honest, like that's beenin some ways kind of a struggle.

(56:37):
Do we provide more complexity here toget a better answer or do we provide less
complexity to get a pretty good answer?
I think that's been a thoughtprocess evolution for us, too.
That could be a little bit evenbigger than energy modeling or,
or buildings, particularly likejust thinking about your life.

(56:57):
Like, what is a good enough answer forthis problem that I have in front of me
and can I get to a good enough answer likereally quickly, or do I need a perfect
answer that's going to take a lot longer?
So I think that's, for me, it'sgotten me much more comfortable
with, with good enough answers.
I'm a very detail oriented person, butI think, uh, I've almost trained myself

(57:20):
out of that a little bit in some ways,and I think that's a positive thing.
Very cool.
What Ben just mentioned really makes methink of something that's important for
all of our students as they learn scienceand other disciplines that a modeling
tool like Sketchbox can model the energyused by a building and then if you're
modeling an existing building, you cancompare to what the building actually did.

(57:43):
And then a really important and usefuland productive question to ask students
is that these numbers don't match exactly.
And then to really have the discussionwith students about why is that
and what is, how do models work?
And really to Ben's point,like when is it good enough?
And those are really useful thingsto introduce students to that you'll

(58:05):
really not get them really capablewith, but that they just need to start
thinking about the earlier in theireducation and careers the better.
And Sketchbox is a tool thatcan really can help do that.
I don't think I'm gonna come up witha wrap up that's better than what
y'all just said, so I'm just gonnasay again, thank y'all for coming on.
I really appreciate the conversationwe've had and the insight you've given me.

(58:26):
And yeah, just letting me in onsome of the knowledge that you
guys have about the software.
It's been really cool, so thank youvery much for giving me your time.
Cool.
Thanks a lot.
Thank you again to Ben, Gabi, andJim for joining me in this episode
to talk about energy modeling and thedifferent ways that it can be utilized

(58:51):
in both our regular workflow and inthe classroom, as well as why open
source softwares like Sketchbox are soimportant to the future of our industry.
For our next episode, in the discussionrevolving around clean energy,
you've probably heard the term energyefficient a lot, and for good reason.
Incorporating energy efficient technologyinto homes and businesses, not only

(59:15):
saves money on energy bills, but itputs less stress on our power grid.
And this is where the ConnectedCommunities project comes in.
Launched in 2021, the goal of the projectis to create connected communities, via
smart controls, sensors, and analyticsto communicate with the electrical
grid, which reduces the amount ofenergy required during periods of peak

(59:37):
demand and helps our neighborhoodsand cities just work more efficiently.
So if that piques your interest, you'renot gonna wanna miss our next one.
And until then, be curious and think
big.