As part of the updates to National Construction Code (NCC) 2022, the Australian Building Codes Board (ABCB) has released a new Standard for heating and cooling load limits for energy ratings using the Nationwide House Energy Rating Scheme (NatHERS) software.
The new load limits are based on updated data from NatHERS and CSIRO’s Australian Housing Data (AHD) portal. The new dataset has been subject to extensive quality control.
The new load limits are different to the load limits released as part of the NCC public consultation in August 2021 which are embedded in the NatHERS beta tools.
The new load limits for ABCB’s 7-star stringency use the updated NatHERS climate files and star bands.