NCC 2022 Webinar Series: commercial energy efficiency

Clare: Hi, and welcome to this presentation on the NCC 2022 Commercial building energy efficiency provisions. I'm Clare Wright, your host.

Before we begin, I'd like to take a moment to acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land on which we produced this presentation, the Ngunnawal peoples, as well as the Traditional Owners of the land from which you are viewing this presentation. I'd like to pay my respects to their elders past and present, and recognise their culture as the longest living culture in the world.

Today's presenter is Mike Dodd. Mike is one of our energy efficiency team members here at the Australian Building Codes Board. His work involves project managing some of the energy efficiency changes in the Code.

Before we hand over to Mike, I'd like to cover off the learning outcomes for this presentation. After the session, the aim is that you'll have a better understanding of the NCC and learn the following.

First, be able to describe the changes to the National Construction Code as they relate to commercial energy efficiency.

Second, interpret and understand some of these provisions.

And lastly, identify when these changes will be adopted.

Now I'll hand you over to Mike, who will take you through the content.

Mark: Today, I will provide a summary of the recently released energy efficiency provisions included in the 2022 update of the NCC. These changes apply to Class 3, and Class 5 to 9 buildings. The intent is to provide information on the provisions that will assist you in understanding the changes.

Here is what we will cover today. Following an overview of the changes and their intent, we will look at the mandatory Performance Requirements. We will then look in detail at the key changes for commercial buildings.

There are also new provisions related to electric vehicles, or EVs, and renewable energy equipment like solar photovoltaic panels and batteries. I will conclude by providing the information on when the changes will be adopted and where further guidance can be found.

Okay, to begin with, I will cover the key changes that we think you need to be aware of. There are 5 key things to highlight in relation to the energy efficiency changes for commercial buildings. I will go through each of these in more detail as we progress through the presentation.

Firstly, there is an update to the non-regulatory objectives and functional statements for Section J. These help clarify the high-level intent. Second, there is an extensive change to the clause numbering system. Third, there are changes to the NABERS and Green Star compliance pathways. Fourth, there are small but important changes to the Deemed-to-Satisfy provisions for floor insulation. Lastly, there are several new Deemed-to-Satisfy provisions for electric vehicles and renewable energy readiness.

Okay, so what is the intent of the new requirement? Let's move on to the next slide. There are 4 objectives, which are to reduce energy consumption and energy peak demand. To reduce greenhouse gas emissions. To improve occupant health and amenity, and to make the retrofit of renewable energy and electric vehicle charging equipment easy.

They also help deliver on the commitment by all Australian governments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, including the Australian Government's enhanced 43% emissions reduction target for 2030, and commitment to net zero by 2050, which was announced in October, 2021.

There are 2 mandatory energy efficiency Performance Requirements that relate to commercial buildings, including the common areas of Class 2 buildings - one is existing, and one is new. I'll go through each in turn now.

In 2019, JP1 was the only Performance Requirement in Section J. In 2022, J1P1 is the updated clause number for what was JP1. This Performance Requirement relates to energy use of all commercial buildings and the common areas of apartment buildings. The only change to this Performance Requirement from 2019 is that it now explicitly excludes the sole occupancy units for Class 2 apartment buildings and Class 4 parts of a building. These now have their own dedicated Performance Requirements.

The extract on the screen shows the update [04:25 – 04:40]. Only the highlighted words and the clause number has changed. You can see that most of this item is unchanged, and it is business as usual in relation to meeting this Performance Requirement.

The new Performance Requirement that relates to commercial buildings, including the common areas of Class 2 buildings, is J1P4. It states: "A building must have features that facilitate the future installation of on-site renewable energy generation and storage and electric vehicle charging equipment." To meet this Performance Requirement, there are several DTS readiness provisions that I will cover in more detail later.

The focus of this presentation is Class 3 and Class 5 to 9 buildings. But it's also worth noting that there are 2 other new Performance Requirements in NCC 2022, J1P2 and J1P3. in NCC 2022, J1P2 and J1P3. These are dedicated provisions for sole-occupancy units in Class 2 apartment buildings and Class 4 parts of buildings. These are not covered in this presentation, but if you would like to know more about this topic, please see the apartment building energy efficiency webinar, available on our YouTube channel.

Briefly, one thing that is unchanged are the compliance pathways for commercial buildings. Just as in 2019, you can demonstrate that a project satisfies the Performance Requirements by using a Performance Solution, a Deemed-to-Satisfy Solution, or a combination of both.

The existing whole of building proscribed calculation Verification Methods - J1V1, J1V2, and J1V3 Verification using a reference building also remain available as compliance options. The J1V4 building sealing calculation method to comply with part of the J1P1 Performance Requirement is also retained.

The process for each compliance pathway is also largely as it was in 2019, except that the J1V1 NABERS Commitment Agreement Verification Method has been expanded to cover a range of building types beyond office buildings. And, the J1V2 Green Star method has been simplified, but I'll cover these in more detail later on.

I'll go through the key changes to Section J in more detail now. These are relevant to the common areas of Class 2 buildings, Class 3 buildings, and Class 5 to 9 buildings.

The first key change that you will see is that the Objectives and Functional Statements have been returned to Volume One from the Guide. The Objectives and Functional Statements are still non-regulatory but help with clarifying the intent of the provisions. Previously, the Guide identified that for energy efficiency the objective was to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The objective has now been expanded to align with the Government's Trajectory for Low Energy Buildings policy. The Trajectory notes that the benefits of energy efficiency include lower bills, improved health and comfort for occupants, improved resilience, lower peak electricity demand, and reduced greenhouse gas emissions, and these things are now also the objectives of Section J in the NCC.

The next key change is the updates to the clause numbering that has occurred throughout the entire NCC. It is referred to as SPTC, which reflects the new system's referencing syntax - Section, Part, Type, Clause. Some examples are shown on the screen [08:07 – 08:25].

Importantly, SPTC retains as much of the previous NCC's referencing system as possible. To assist practitioners' transition to the new referencing system, NCC 2022 includes NCC 2019 numbering NCC 2022 includes NCC 2019 numbering alongside the new numbering.

Moving on, another set of changes to note are that the J1V1 NABERS pathway has been expanded from only Class 5 office buildings. It now includes a NABERS star rating equivalent for Class 2 common areas, Class 3 hotels, and Class 6 shopping centres with a gross lettable area greater than 15,000 square metres.

In the Verification Method J1V2 for Green Star, the modeling requirements have also been simplified. Buildings following this pathway no longer require a model consistent with both the J1V3 modeling parameters and the Green Star modeling parameters. So, if you are following the Green Star Verification Method, use the Green Star calculation method only. While the modeling requirements were often identical, they were occasionally small variations that led to modeling efforts being duplicated.

For example, Green Star specifies the plant configuration for the reference building, but J1V3 requires use of the proposed plant in the reference building. This difference previously meant two models would have been required, but this is now no longer the case.

The next item to note is an amendment to clause J4D7, which relates to the thermal performance of a concrete floor slab. In most instances, a slab-on-ground that does not have an in-slab heating or cooling system is considered to achieve a Total R-Value of R2.0. This means that it should automatically meet the Deemed-to-Satisfy Total R-Value requirement, which is also set to R2.0. As well as reducing the amount of calculations needed, this should mean fewer buildings need to install under-slab insulation to meet the Deemed-to-Satisfy provision.

This change especially affects buildings with a high floor perimeter to floor area ratio, which tend to be smaller buildings. However, the exception is in climate zone 7 and in climate zone 8 for overnight operating Class 3 and 9 buildings. Climate zones 7 and 8 cover alpine regions and other cold-winter areas like Canberra, Armidale, and much of Tasmania. In these areas you will still need to calculate the Total R-Value for the slab-on-ground, and may still need to add under-slab insulation.

Before I move onto the requirements for renewable energy and electric vehicle readiness, I would like to highlight that there have been extensive changes to the requirements for Class 2 building sole occupancy units that sit in Section J. These changes are covered in a separate presentation titled "Apartment Energy Efficiency".

Next up, I'm going to discuss the new suite of provisions designed to make it easy to retrofit solar panels, electric vehicle charging and battery storage equipment into all commercial and apartment buildings. These provisions will allow you to show compliance with the J1P4 Performance Requirement.

Performance Requirement J1P4 - Renewable energy and electric vehicle charging, requires commercial buildings and apartment buildings to prepare for renewable energy and EV charging equipment.

Commercial buildings need to plan for: A percentage of car park spaces that can be easily converted to support EV charging, installation of charge control devices for EVs, the provision of dedicated distribution boards adjacent to car park spaces, space to be left on electrical switchboards for circuit breakers for batteries and solar panels, ensuring that 20% of the roof area space remains clear for future installation of solar panels, and ensuring warehouse roofs are structurally designed to support the addition of solar panels in the future. The Deemed-to-Satisfy provision is Clause J9D4 in Volume One. Note it is about EV readiness, not EV chargers. It's about laying the groundwork for easy EV charger installation later. What it is looking to facilitate is type 2 EV chargers, ones that can operate on a 32 Amp circuit, and readiness for AC charging, not DC charging.

To make a building EV-ready, there are three requirements related to physical infrastructure, electrical capacity, and control equipment. The proportion of car park spaces that need to be ready to support future installation of EV charging depends on the classification of the building and is shown on this slide.

For Class 2 apartment buildings, 100% or all of the spaces need to be EV-ready. For Class 5 and 6 buildings, like office and retail buildings, at least 10% of the spaces are to be EV-ready. For Class 3, and Class 7b, 8, and 9 buildings, at least 20% of the spaces are to be EV-ready. Except for Class 2 apartments, the percentages are set at a level you'd expect the building to be able to deal with business as usual, without upgrading their electrical head room. Class 7A buildings, which are stand-alone car parks, are not included. They typically have a very small switchboard and a very large number of car park spaces. Including them would massively drive-up build costs and not be economically feasible.

For the first key requirement, physical infrastructure, we are mainly talking about distribution boards dedicated to EV charging. Clause J9D4 requires distribution boards to be placed in car parks based on the number of EV-ready car park spaces per storey. This is the table [14:19 – 15:17] that shows how many distribution boards will be required. Basically, it's 1 per 24 EV-ready car park spaces.

In the previous slide, we showed the proportion of car park spaces that need to be ready to support the future installation of EV charging. In bringing the two tables together, for Class 2 buildings, all the car park spaces need to be EV-ready. For Class 3 to 9 buildings, except 7A car parks, you need to multiply the total number of car park spaces by the 10 to 20% requirement from the previous slide to work out how many car park spaces are required to be EV-ready per storey. For example, if there are 100 car park spaces on a single storey of a Class 5 building, 10%, or 10 spaces need to be EV-ready. From Table J9D4, this means that one electrical distribution board is needed to allow for future EV charging needs.

The second key requirement relates to electrical capacity requirements in the distribution boards. This is dealt with in clause J9D4(2). What this is saying is that you need to size your EV circuits to be able to deliver 12 kWh of electricity through a charger in an 8 hour period. Except for Class 3 buildings, which require 48 kWh through a charger over 8 hours. For Class 2 and Class 3 buildings that eight hour period is overnight. For Class 5 to 9 buildings, it is during the day, 9 AM to 5 PM. In all situations, it does not prevent charging at other times but requires the capacity to be provided at the times we would expect most charging to occur.

The third key requirement relates to a charge control system with the ability to manage and control charging in response to total building demand. At the very basic level, this could be achieved with timers in the distribution board, and metering and breakers upstream. This leaves room for smart system to be deployed over the top at a later date.The concept of load management is central to the measures. It keeps the cost down by reducing or avoiding the need to upgrade the network connection.

We'll now look at the new provision intended to allow for easy addition of solar photovoltaic, or PV panels, and batteries to Class 2 to 9 buildings. This is J9D5 Facilities for solar photovoltaic and battery systems. There are 2 clauses in this provision.

Clause 1 relates to the building's main switchboard and the second relates to the roof. To facilitate the future installation of solar PV on a building, the provision provides for at least one labeled circuit breaker slot on the main switch board. The clause also requires the main switchboard to be sized to accommodate supply from a PV system that covers 20% of the roof space. There's also a requirement to leave at least one circuit breaker slot for a battery storage system. This clause is the extent of the provisions for battery storage readiness.

Clause 2 of J9D5 sets out the provision to leave 20% of the roof clear for ease of retrofit, except for buildings that are heavily shaded, already have solar, or where most of the roof is used for other purposes, like a roof garden or car parking, or where the roof is very small.

There is also a provision for warehouse roofs to ensure that they have the structural adequacy to support solar panels being installed in the future. Those provisions are set out in Section B of Volume One. We are specifically targeting warehouses as this is the sector where roof structural issues are most likely to arise preventing a solar retrofit. Most roofs in other building classifications will have adequate structural capacity to accommodate a solar retrofit business as usual.

If you want to know more about what I have covered in this presentation, there are a few places you can visit. The ABCB resource library has lots of content to help you understand the NCC, be that existing content or the changes in this presentation. You can find the resource library on the ABCB website.

Our resources include, in depth handbooks, helpful articles, and calculators to provide further guidance when working with the NCC.

Our YouTube channel has many helpful videos to watch at your own pace. Given that the vast majority of Section J remains unchanged from NCC 2019, we recommend you watch the Section J transformed video on the channel if you'd like to know more. Or, if you are after a more fundamental understanding of a topic, the NCC Tutor series of videos is a great introduction to key components on the NCC.

Clare: Thanks for that, Mike. We hope everyone found that informative. That brings our presentation on the changes to commercial energy efficiency in NCC 2022 to a close.

Again, if you want more information, visit abcb.gov.au. Thanks for watching.

Clare: Hi, and welcome to this presentation on the NCC 2022 Commercial building energy efficiency provisions. I'm Clare Wright, your host.

Before we begin, I'd like to take a moment to acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land on which we produced this presentation, the Ngunnawal peoples, as well as the Traditional Owners of the land from which you are viewing this presentation. I'd like to pay my respects to their elders past and present and recognise their culture as the longest living culture in the world.

Today's presenter is Mike Dodd. Mike is one of our energy efficiency team members here at the Australian Building Codes Board. His work involves project managing some of the energy efficiency changes in the Code.

Before we hand over to Mike, I'd like to cover off the learning outcomes for this presentation. After the session, the aim is that you'll have a better understanding of the NCC and learn the following.

First, be able to describe the changes to the National Construction Code as they relate to commercial energy efficiency.

Second, interpret and understand some of these provisions.

And lastly, identify when these changes will be adopted.

Now I'll hand you over to Mike, who will take you through the content.

Mark: Today, I will provide a summary of the recently released energy efficiency provisions included in the 2022 update of the NCC. These changes apply to Class 3, and Class 5 to 9 buildings. The intent is to provide information on the provisions that will assist you in understanding the changes.

Here is what we will cover today. Following an overview of the changes and their intent, we will look at the mandatory performance requirements. We will then look in detail at the key changes for commercial buildings.

There are also new provisions related to electric vehicles, or EVs, and renewable energy equipment like solar photovoltaic panels and batteries. I will conclude by providing the information on when the changes will be adopted and where further guidance can be found.

Okay, to begin with, I will cover the key changes that we think you need to be aware of. There are 5 key things to highlight in relation to the energy efficiency changes for commercial buildings. I will go through each of these in more detail as we progress through the presentation.

Firstly, there is an update to the non-regulatory objectives and functional statements for Section J. These help clarify the high-level intent. Second, there is an extensive change to the clause numbering system. Third, there are changes to the NABERS and Green Star compliance pathways. Fourth, there are small but important changes to the Deemed-to-Satisfy provisions for floor insulation. Lastly, there are several new Deemed-to-Satisfy provisions for electric vehicles and renewable energy readiness.

Okay, so what is the intent of the new requirement? Let's move on to the next slide. There are 4 objectives, which are to reduce energy consumption and energy peak demand. To reduce greenhouse gas emissions. To improve occupant health and amenity, and to make the retrofit of renewable energy and electric vehicle charging equipment easy.

They also help deliver on the commitment by all Australian governments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, including the Australian Government's enhanced 43% emissions reduction target for 2030, and commitment to net zero by 2050, which was announced in October 2021.

There are two mandatory energy efficiency performance requirements that relate to commercial buildings, including the common areas of Class 2 buildings - one is existing, and one is new. I'll go through each in turn now.

In 2019, JP1 was the only Performance Requirement in Section J. In 2022, J1P1 is the updated clause number for what was JP1. This Performance Requirement relates to energy use of all commercial buildings and the common areas of apartment buildings. The only change to this Performance Requirement from 2019 is that it now explicitly excludes the sole occupancy units for Class 2 apartment buildings and Class 4 parts of a building. These now have their own dedicated Performance Requirements.

The extract on the screen shows the update [04:25 – 04:40]. Only the highlighted words and the clause number has changed. You can see that most of this item is unchanged, and it is business as usual in relation to meeting this Performance Requirement.

The new Performance Requirement that relates to commercial buildings, including the common areas of Class 2 buildings, is J1P4. It states: "A building must have features that facilitate the future installation of on-site renewable energy generation and storage and electric vehicle charging equipment." To meet this Performance Requirement, there are several DTS readiness provisions that I will cover in more detail later.

The focus of this presentation is Class 3 and Class 5 to 9 buildings. But it's also worth noting that there are 2 other new Performance Requirements in NCC 2022, J1P2 and J1P3. in NCC 2022, J1P2 and J1P3. These are dedicated provisions for sole-occupancy units in Class 2 apartment buildings and Class 4 parts of buildings. These are not covered in this presentation, but if you would like to know more about this topic, please see the apartment building energy efficiency webinar, available on our YouTube channel.

Briefly, one thing that is unchanged are the compliance pathways for commercial buildings. Just as in 2019, you can demonstrate that a project satisfies the Performance Requirements by using a Performance Solution, a Deemed-to-Satisfy Solution, or a combination of both.

The existing whole of building proscribed calculation Verification Methods - J1V1, J1V2, and J1V3 Verification using a reference building also remain available as compliance options. The J1V4 building sealing calculation method to comply with part of the J1P1 Performance Requirement is also retained.

The process for each compliance pathway is also largely as it was in 2019, except that the J1V1 NABERS Commitment Agreement Verification Method has been expanded to cover a range of building types beyond office buildings. And, the J1V2 Green Star method has been simplified, but I'll cover these in more detail later on.

I'll go through the key changes to Section J in more detail now. These are relevant to the common areas of Class 2 buildings, Class 3 buildings, and Class 5 to 9 buildings.

The first key change that you will see is that the Objectives and Functional Statements have been returned to Volume One from the Guide. The Objectives and Functional Statements are still non-regulatory but help with clarifying the intent of the provisions. Previously, the Guide identified that for energy efficiency the objective was to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The objective has now been expanded to align with the Government's Trajectory for Low Energy Buildings policy. The Trajectory notes that the benefits of energy efficiency include lower bills, improved health and comfort for occupants, improved resilience, lower peak electricity demand, and reduced greenhouse gas emissions, and these things are now also the objectives of Section J in the NCC.

The next key change is the updates to the clause numbering that has occurred throughout the entire NCC. It is referred to as SPTC, which reflects the new system's referencing syntax - Section, Part, Type, Clause. Some examples are shown on the screen [08:07 – 08:25].

Importantly, SPTC retains as much of the previous NCC's referencing system as possible. To assist practitioners' transition to the new referencing system, NCC 2022 includes NCC 2019 numbering NCC 2022 includes NCC 2019 numbering alongside the new numbering.

Moving on, another set of changes to note are that the J1V1 NABERS pathway has been expanded from only Class 5 office buildings. It now includes a NABERS star rating equivalent for Class 2 common areas, Class 3 hotels, and Class 6 shopping centres with a gross lettable area greater than 15,000 square metres.

In the Verification Method J1V2 for Green Star, the modelling requirements have also been simplified. Buildings following this pathway no longer require a model consistent with both the J1V3 modelling parameters and the Green Star modelling parameters. So, if you are following the Green Star Verification Method, use the Green Star calculation method only. While the modelling requirements were often identical, they were occasionally small variations that led to modelling efforts being duplicated.

For example, Green Star specifies the plant configuration for the reference building, but J1V3 requires use of the proposed plant in the reference building. This difference previously meant two models would have been required, but this is now no longer the case.

The next item to note is an amendment to clause J4D7, which relates to the thermal performance of a concrete floor slab. In most instances, a slab-on-ground that does not have an in-slab heating or cooling system is considered to achieve a Total R-Value of R2.0. This means that it should automatically meet the Deemed-to-Satisfy Total R-Value requirement, which is also set to R2.0. As well as reducing the amount of calculations needed, this should mean fewer buildings need to install under-slab insulation to meet the Deemed-to-Satisfy provision.

This change especially affects buildings with a high floor perimeter to floor area ratio, which tend to be smaller buildings. However, the exception is in climate zone 7 and in climate zone 8 for overnight operating Class 3 and 9 buildings. Climate zones 7 and 8 cover alpine regions and other cold-winter areas like Canberra, Armidale, and much of Tasmania. In these areas you will still need to calculate the Total R-Value for the slab-on-ground and may still need to add under-slab insulation.

Before I move onto the requirements for renewable energy and electric vehicle readiness, I would like to highlight that there have been extensive changes to the requirements for Class 2 building sole occupancy units that sit in Section J. These changes are covered in a separate presentation titled "Apartment Energy Efficiency".

Next up, I'm going to discuss the new suite of provisions designed to make it easy to retrofit solar panels, electric vehicle charging and battery storage equipment into all commercial and apartment buildings. These provisions will allow you to show compliance with the J1P4 Performance Requirement.

Performance Requirement J1P4 - Renewable energy and electric vehicle charging, requires commercial buildings and apartment buildings to prepare for renewable energy and EV charging equipment.

Commercial buildings need to plan for: A percentage of car park spaces that can be easily converted to support EV charging, installation of charge control devices for EVs, the provision of dedicated distribution boards adjacent to car park spaces, space to be left on electrical switchboards for circuit breakers for batteries and solar panels, ensuring that 20% of the roof area space remains clear for future installation of solar panels, and ensuring warehouse roofs are structurally designed to support the addition of solar panels in the future. The Deemed-to-Satisfy provision is Clause J9D4 in Volume One. Note it is about EV readiness, not EV chargers. It's about laying the groundwork for easy EV charger installation later. What it is looking to facilitate is type 2 EV chargers, ones that can operate on a 32 Amp circuit, and readiness for AC charging, not DC charging.

To make a building EV-ready, there are three requirements related to physical infrastructure, electrical capacity, and control equipment. The proportion of car park spaces that need to be ready to support future installation of EV charging depends on the classification of the building and is shown on this slide.

For Class 2 apartment buildings, 100% or all of the spaces need to be EV-ready. For Class 5 and 6 buildings, like office and retail buildings, at least 10% of the spaces are to be EV-ready. For Class 3, and Class 7b, 8, and 9 buildings, at least 20% of the spaces are to be EV-ready. Except for Class 2 apartments, the percentages are set at a level you'd expect the building to be able to deal with business as usual, without upgrading their electrical head room. Class 7A buildings, which are stand-alone car parks, are not included. They typically have a very small switchboard and a very large number of car park spaces. Including them would massively drive-up build costs and not be economically feasible.

For the first key requirement, physical infrastructure, we are mainly talking about distribution boards dedicated to EV charging. Clause J9D4 requires distribution boards to be placed in car parks based on the number of EV-ready car park spaces per storey. This is the table [14:19 – 15:17] that shows how many distribution boards will be required. Basically, it's 1 per 24 EV-ready car park spaces.

In the previous slide, we showed the proportion of car park spaces that need to be ready to support the future installation of EV charging. In bringing the two tables together, for Class 2 buildings, all the car park spaces need to be EV-ready. For Class 3 to 9 buildings, except 7A car parks, you need to multiply the total number of car park spaces by the 10 to 20% requirement from the previous slide to work out how many car park spaces are required to be EV-ready per storey. For example, if there are 100 car park spaces on a single storey of a Class 5 building, 10%, or 10 spaces need to be EV-ready. From Table J9D4, this means that one electrical distribution board is needed to allow for future EV charging needs.

The second key requirement relates to electrical capacity requirements in the distribution boards. This is dealt with in clause J9D4(2). What this is saying is that you need to size your EV circuits to be able to deliver 12 kWh of electricity through a charger in an 8 hour period. Except for Class 3 buildings, which require 48 kWh through a charger over 8 hours. For Class 2 and Class 3 buildings that 8 hour period is overnight. For Class 5 to 9 buildings, it is during the day, 9 AM to 5 PM. In all situations, it does not prevent charging at other times but requires the capacity to be provided at the times we would expect most charging to occur.

The third key requirement relates to a charge control system with the ability to manage and control charging in response to total building demand. At the very basic level, this could be achieved with timers in the distribution board, and metering and breakers upstream. This leaves room for smart system to be deployed over the top at a later date. The concept of load management is central to the measures. It keeps the cost down by reducing or avoiding the need to upgrade the network connection.

We'll now look at the new provision intended to allow for easy addition of solar photovoltaic, or PV panels, and batteries to Class 2 to 9 buildings. This is J9D5 Facilities for solar photovoltaic and battery systems. There are 2 clauses in this provision.

Clause 1 relates to the building's main switchboard and the second relates to the roof. To facilitate the future installation of solar PV on a building, the provision provides for at least one labelled circuit breaker slot on the main switch board. The clause also requires the main switchboard to be sized to accommodate supply from a PV system that covers 20% of the roof space. There's also a requirement to leave at least one circuit breaker slot for a battery storage system. This clause is the extent of the provisions for battery storage readiness.

Clause 2 of J9D5 sets out the provision to leave 20% of the roof clear for ease of retrofit, except for buildings that are heavily shaded, already have solar, or where most of the roof is used for other purposes, like a roof garden or car parking, or where the roof is very small.

There is also a provision for warehouse roofs to ensure that they have the structural adequacy to support solar panels being installed in the future. Those provisions are set out in Section B of Volume One. We are specifically targeting warehouses as this is the sector where roof structural issues are most likely to arise preventing a solar retrofit. Most roofs in other building classifications will have adequate structural capacity to accommodate a solar retrofit business as usual.

If you want to know more about what I have covered in this presentation, there are a few places you can visit. The ABCB resource library has lots of content to help you understand the NCC, be that existing content or the changes in this presentation. You can find the resource library on the ABCB website.

Our resources include, in depth handbooks, helpful articles, and calculators to provide further guidance when working with the NCC.

Our YouTube channel has many helpful videos to watch at your own pace. Given that the vast majority of Section J remains unchanged from NCC 2019, we recommend you watch the Section J transformed video on the channel if you'd like to know more. Or, if you are after a more fundamental understanding of a topic, the NCC Tutor series of videos is a great introduction to key components on the NCC.

Clare: Thanks for that, Mike. We hope everyone found that informative. That brings our presentation on the changes to commercial energy efficiency in NCC 2022 to a close.

Again, if you want more information, visit abcb.gov.au. Thanks for watching.