1.7.1

These changes went live 12th November 2022.

User Interface Changes

• Merri-bek City Council (formerly Moreland City Council) - Merri-bek City Council is the new name for Moreland City Council after a name change that took effect on 26 September 2022. You can now select Merri-bek City Council for your projects in BESS. Historical snapshots (pdf reports) are not updated.
  
• Council Name lookup connected to address - When you create a project and enter the address, the Council Name will automatically be populated (via Google Maps). If a council cannot be found, or the council is not a BESS subscriber, this field will be left blank. It can also be overridden if needed.

BESS-7 Engine

The BESS-7 Engine introduces a range of improvements to Energy, Innovation and IEQ sections.

• New - Energy Credit 2.6 for all electric developments - A new credit has been introduced in the Energy category for developments that are all-electric. This credit recognises the role of electrification in the transition to a zero carbon economy. This is a project wide credit - the entire development must be all electric for this credit to be claimed. More information is available in the BESS Tool Notes.
  
• Change - Innovation category scoring - The Innovation category continues to contribute 9% toward the overall BESS score, however is only available once a project has achieved a 50% score via the other categories. This change has been made to improve consistency across councils while continuing to encourage and reward development that goes beyond the 50% pass score in BESS.
• Credit change - IEQ4.1 (Air Quality Non-Residential) - ability to answer by building class - Previously this question was project wide, which meant that all non-residential building classes needed to meet the criteria in order to answer ‘Yes’ to each question. The change gives more flexibility and means that one building class (e.g. offices) could meet this credit where another building class in the development does not.
• Expanded - Heat pump hot water selections:
  
  

  The ‘Type of Hot Water System’ list has been expanded to include four heat pump options of varying efficiency, recognising that hot water heat pumps do not perform equally. As heat pumps do not currently carry energy labels, efficiencies have been derived from data from the Clean Energy Regulator on the number of small-scale technology certificates (STCs) available. More information is available in the BESS tool tips and tool notes.

  For existing projects upgrading to BESS-7, if you previously selected Electric Heat Pump hot water this will map to Electric Heat Pump Band 1.

  
• Hot water algorithm - cold water supply temp - Note that as part of the hot water changes, cold water temperatures by zone have been included for the first time in BESS. Hot water supply temp is set at 61 degrees Celcius. This means that delta T (the increase in temperature) is now a calculated value. If you copy and upgrade a BESS-6 project you may notice that the reference case and proposed values in the energy category are slightly different in the new project, regardless of which hot water system you have selected.

Existing and new projects

• New projects - will be created in the latest engine - BESS-7
• Existing draft projects (in BESS-6 or earlier) - you can open and edit your project in any old engine, until that engine is retired. You can also upgrade the project to the latest engine if you choose - note that your project score may change. If you copy the project, the copy will be upgraded to the latest engine and your project score may change.
• Existing snapshots (pdf reports, in BESS-6 or earlier) - these never change. You will always be able to view and print your pdf report. If you copy a snapshot, the copy will be upgraded to the latest engine and the project score may change.

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