President's Message, August 2012 - Dashboard Competition!

There’s been a lot of activity on the Passive House Northwest Google Group in the last couple of months, discussing PHPP Dashboards. A Dashboard is a customized interface to the Passive House Planning Package, which collects and displays key data on a single page, to simplify interpretation. A Dashboard is an overlay to PHPP – it doesn’t alter cells within the program, but merely harvests data from it for display on the Dashboard.

Some people have developed Dashboards that can estimate the cost and savings impacts of decisions input into the program. Others have suggested developing one to estimate the amount of PV needed for a project to achieve Net Zero Energy. Tools such as these can help us more effectively sell Passive House to our clients!

The American Passive House Network is sponsoring a competition for the best PHPP Dashboard. This project has the approval of the Passive House Institute in Germany, and the winning Dashboard may be incorporated into the next version of PHPP. The First Place winner will receive a $200 prize (courtesy of Passive House Northwest!), and a free copy of the US 2012 PHPP v7. Second Place will receive a free copy of the US 2012 PHPP v7.

For more information about the contest, or to enter your own Dashboard, go to: (http://www.aphnetwork.org/)

Good luck!