Green Star: Daylight

This 23-minute course offers a comprehensive understanding of 'Green Star Daylight Modelling,' a specialised assessment methodology for achieving daylight credits within New Zealand's premier green building rating system. Through detailed technical instruction using a commercial building model, participants will learn to configure, execute, and document Spatial Daylight Autonomy simulations that demonstrate compliance with Green Star requirements using industry-standard radiance simulation technology.

Key Course Content:

This course establishes the Green Star daylight assessment framework, focusing on the core requirement of achieving 100 lux minimum illuminance levels across 80% of nominated annual hours within commercial spaces. You'll explore the dynamic nature of Spatial Daylight Autonomy (SDA) as a temporal and spatial analysis metric, understanding its expression as percentage of analysis area achieving specific illuminance thresholds (typically 160-300 lux range), and the strategic flexibility in defining nominated daylight hours across seasons and building use patterns for effective Green Star compliance demonstration.

You'll master systematic assessment setup using Better Building's pre-configured Green Star templates, learning the critical distinction between residential (40% area requirement at 160 lux) and commercial building applications whilst defining assessment scope through space type selection and configuring temporal parameters including 8am-6pm assessment hours with calendar options ranging from annual to weekdays only. The course covers comprehensive grid configuration methodologies including standard 750mm height above floor level for desk-plane analysis, grid size optimisation balancing result resolution (0.2m recommended) with computational requirements, and sophisticated grid source options combining automatic boundary detection with custom placement techniques for specific zones and margin configuration from external boundaries and internal obstacles.

The course extensively covers building performance parameter specification including surface reflectance values for walls (60%), ceilings (70%), and floors (30%) with space-specific customisation options, advanced material properties including specularity and roughness parameters, and shading element reflectance for both internal and external devices. You'll gain comprehensive experience interpreting Green Star daylight results including zone-by-zone SDA percentage analysis, identification of underperforming areas requiring design intervention, and critical evaluation of nominated areas to ensure assessment scope accuracy. Advanced topics include sophisticated result presentation techniques for design team communication, high-resolution image capture and overlay onto architectural drawings, customised legend configuration and point result density adjustment, and strategic comparison between platform-generated reports versus custom documentation approaches that effectively demonstrate compliance achievement and identify areas requiring design optimisation for Green Star certification success.

Learning Outcomes:

By the end of this course, participants will be thoroughly equipped to execute Green Star daylight assessments, interpret SDA results for compliance demonstration, and generate professional documentation suitable for Green Star certification submissions using Better Building's radiance-based daylight analysis platform.

Course Completion:

A Certificate of Completion will be awarded upon achieving an 80% pass mark on the final quiz.

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