EnergyPlus for Practitioners

Live Webinars
11 January - 4 February

What's Included?

  • 4 Live Webinars (~10 Hours Total)
  • 5 Lecture Slide PDFs (12 Lectures Total)
  • 4 Reference Handout PDFs
  • 10 Hands-On "Homework" Exercises
  • 4 Practice Quizzes
  • 4 Graded Exams
  • Certificate of Completion


This workshop focuses on the needs of the energy modeling practitioner in order to get you up to speed and be highly productive with EnergyPlus as quickly as possible. We cover the fundamentals of EnergyPlus such as geometry and internal loads while rapidly ramping up to advanced topics such as HVAC systems and controls. 

We guide you through the complexities of the EnergyPlus syntax, input/output files, documentation, and essential software tools including the Euclid extension for SketchUp. Most importantly, we teach you how to use the available resources to teach yourself going forward. We have developed our training materials from scratch over a period of several years based on our extensive experience using EnergyPlus to model real-world projects and helping others to do the same. This workshop should be a prerequisite for anyone planning to work with EnergyPlus regardless of what user interface you choose. By the end of the workshop, you should be comfortable with creating, running, and debugging EnergyPlus models.

If you are interested in also attending the EnergyPlus EMS Controls workshop, we offer a bundle registration option at a discount.
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Workshop Format

All of our workshops are designed for in-person training and are split almost 50/50 between time in lectures and demonstrations vs time in exercises. The training format will use multiple webinar sessions via Zoom, each lasting 2.5-3 hours to cover the lectures and demonstrations. All webinar sessions will be live only -- webinar recordings will not be available for re-viewing.

 In between webinar sessions, we will assign hands-on exercises as "homework" to practice the topics covered in webinars. We will provide input files and instructions for these homework exercises, and attendees are welcome to ask as many questions as they like related to all training material.
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Live Webinar Schedule

Webinar 1 2 3 4
Date Tuesday
14 January		 Tuesday
21 January		 Tuesday
28 January		 Tuesday
4 February
Time
(Mountain, UTC-07:00)
9:30 AM - 12:30 PM
9:30 AM - 12:30 PM
9:30 AM - 12 PM
9:30 AM - 12 PM
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Software Requirements

The workshop is most effective if each participant has their own laptop computer to perform the hands-on exercises.
This workshop was designed for Windows users because some features covered are not available for Mac users. Mac users can still complete the workshop, but should have access to a Windows operating system through Boot Camp or a virtual machine to access all features discussed.
Windows users must have Windows 10 operating system or later, and Mac users must have Mac OSX 10.15 operating system or later.
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Meet the instructor

Aaron Boranian

Aaron Boranian is the lead instructor at Big Ladder Software. He has been developing our training material and delivering workshops for over 7 years. In that time, he has taught more than 750 students across over 75 workshops on building energy modeling in the US and internationally.
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Testimonials

"The design of the workshop was perfect. Start simple and build up to complex. Questions mixed with exercises reinforce the lessons and improve skill levels perfectly. Anyone who wants to learn EnergyPlus would save themselves countless hours of trial and error by attending a Big Ladder training. As a previous training instructor and attendee of training workshops, this Big Ladder EnergyPlus workshop was the most engaging, best designed class where I left with useable skills. Great job Big Ladder!"
James Sitzman
Regional Portfolio Manager
Amazon
"I’ve been an OpenStudio user for years, but I never really felt confident about what was going on under the hood because I hadn’t learned EnergyPlus first. But after attending Big Ladder’s two-day, hands-on EnergyPlus for Practitioners workshop, I’m able to work much faster and more confidently in OpenStudio than ever before. It has paid off tremendously."
Elizabeth Gillmor
Principal
Energetics Consulting Engineers, LLC
"The EnergyPlus for Practitioners course was an excellent training, lifting the curtain of perceived complexity regarding the software. As an expert eQuest and Trane Trace user the course has given me the confidence to learn EnergyPlus and for the first time seriously consider moving toward the platform altogether. As a business owner, courses like these are invaluable, to be able to hear first-hand from EnergyPlus experts, how to customize a new workflow that will help our firm succeed."
Matt Higgins
Founder
Hawk Spider Energy Corp
"This workshop has been incredibly valuable to me even as an experienced user. I have been the person mainly responsible for energy modeling at our office. I feel much more confident now in both my own abilities, as well as my capacity to help teach and guide others in our office. The workshop leader, Aaron, was articulate, humble, and helpful. The structure of the class is clear and engaging with many helpful exercises throughout."
Damon Woods
Interim Director 
University Of Idaho Integrated Design Lab – Boise
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Elevate your energy models!

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Questions?

Read our FAQs or contact us.
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