[Bldg-sim] eQuest Federal Tax Credit Certification

[Julia Beabout]

Hi,
I was at an Equest training seminar recently that was taught by one of the authors of the program.
He stated that they purposefully have not saught approval of Equest for the Tax Deduction program.
My understanding of the teacher's explanation was that CA funded the writing of Equest and it is really intended for use by engineers seeking to prove compliance with the CA energy code.  However, Equest has obviously evolved to be used by lots of people throughout the country.  Since the staff to support the software is very small (a few people) they have purposely avoided seeking to be listed as compliant software on the Tax website because of the expected barrage of questions and requests that they would then need to support and fund on a national level.   I think their goal is to eventually provide more support, but, CA is naturally reluctant to pay for support for the rest of the nation.  The funding would need to come from elsewhere.
 
In terms of using Equest for the Tax Deduction, perhaps you could argue that the program is really DOE 2 with a user friendly interface and is thus compliant.
 
J


----- Original Message ----
From: Tom Butler <TButler at lasarchitect.com>
To: bldg-sim at lists.onebuilding.org
Sent: Tuesday, June 10, 2008 4:05:08 PM
Subject: [Bldg-sim] eQuest Federal Tax Credit Certification


Any idea on if/when eQuest will be approved as a modeling tool for the Federal Energy Efficiency Tax Deduction. We have a few projects that would qualify, but our analysis was done in eQuest and the cost of having a model redone in one of the approved tools would negate any benefit. 
Thanks 
tb 
Thomas Butler, LEED AP
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