How do I prepare shade measurements for California’s NSHP program?

California’s New Solar Homes Partnership (NSHP) program has a shading requirement that requires some interpretation of SunEye results. The application note here contains some of the detail. Refer to the information starting on page 5.  In summary, the Solmetric SunEye allows you to view your shade measurement in what’s called ‘obstruction elevations’ view, which is basically just a cartesian version of the polar plots shown in the NSHP handbook. You are able to specify whatever azimuth window you need (in this case 11 azimuth windows of 22.5 degrees centered at 180 degrees). On the device, the limitation is that you can only view the obstruction elevations for a single skyline (measurement). To view the obstruction elevations table for your whole session (site visit), we recommend first transferring your session from the SunEye to a desktop using the SunEye desktop software. (You can also review it on the device using Session Data Summaries feature.)   Once it is transferred, open the session and select ‘Export Session Report and Data…’ from the ‘file’ menu.  On the screen where you are able to select which skyline measurements to incorporate in the report/data, remember to select the box for ‘Obstruction Elevation’ under ‘Modify windowing in exported report:’ Then, set the correct azimuth scale options (center: 180 , #windows: 11, window: 22.5, and select “Maximum” radial button). Once you export the report, you will have the option of opening it in your default browser. The report will provide a link for you to view a spreadsheet of the obstruction elevations for your whole session on the second page (it’s called WindowedObstructionElevations.csv). The second column of this spreadsheet should provide you with the azimuth values that you need to fill out NSHP.