Looking to Achieve a NABERSNZ or Green Star Rating?

Sustainability and energy efficiency have become important goals for commercial building owners and tenants and a green building rating is a great way to measure progress towards these goals.
 
A green building rating offers many benefits, some of which are:

• Increased property value
• Lower operating costs
• Lower energy costs
• Reduced vacancy rates
• Increased rental income

 
NABERSNZ and Green Star are the two systems used in New Zealand to rate the energy efficiency or green building standards of buildings.
 
The Difference Between NABERSNZ and Green Star
 
NABERSNZ (link) rates the energy efficiency of office buildings after they have been occupied for at least a year and offers ratings for base build, tenancy or both.
 
Green Star (link) rates all types of buildings and measures a buildings overall environmental impact across nine categories including energy.

What Do You Need to Gain a Rating? 

You need to have an appropriate energy metering system and automatic monitoring system in place, to gain a NABERSNZ rating or for the energy sub-metering category of a Green Star rating.
 
Energy Metering System

The type of rating you are looking to achieve, your building type and size will dictate the energy metering you need to have in place. For example, if you’re looking at a NABERSNZ tenancy rating, you’ll need to have meters in place that separate tenant usage from the rest of your building.
 
Your metering system may also need to further separate loads such as power, lighting, HVAC, lifts, chillers or central plant, and your meters will need to be capable of recording and transmitting the data needed to produce the reports you’ll use for your accreditation.
 
Not sure if your metering system is setup correctly? 

If you are aiming for a NABERSNZ rating and you’re not sure whether your energy meters are setup to meet these requirements, the NZGBC offers a free pre-NABERSNZ review that can check your metering system. You can contact them about this at [email protected].
 
Our team is also experienced in setting up metering systems for NABERSNZ and Green Star. Contact us at [email protected] for a free assessment and quote.

Automatic Monitoring System

The requirements for this also differ, again depending on your building and which rating you want to achieve. At a basic level, your automatic monitoring system must:
 
There is an effective mechanism for monitoring energy consumption data from all energy sub-meters.

• Record consumption and demand of energy or water.
• Produce reports on hourly, daily, monthly, and annual energy use for all meters.
• Alert to missing data due to failures.
• Raise an alarm when the energy or water use increases beyond certain parameters and automatically send an alert about this.
• Provide a breakdown of the information by building system (mechanical, electrical, etc.), or by space.
• Including the consumption water or energy, the load versus time (load profile), and the power factor (in the case of energy).
• Automatically email a report each quarter (or more often), to a nominated person.

 
Wrap-up…
 
Our team have helped a number of businesses to achieve NABERSNZ and Green Star ratings, including Argosy. You can read about how we have helped Argosy here.
 
The Schneider Electric products we offer, PowerLogic power meters and Power Monitoring Expert software, are able to monitor the above and meet NABERSNZ and Green Star reporting requirements.