Audit:
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Handbooks and Examples
- Your second stop should be the Washington State University Energy Program, which also has a great resource geared specifically for audits.
Auditing Definitions
There is no one definition for an energy audit, but rather audits that are conducted on varying degrees of scope and scale. To best support your auditing efforts the first area to concentrate on is what your goals are.
- My town's committee is looking to:
- Education others on how to do energy audits
- Understand what public buildings are inefficient and improve those buildings on a town wide scale
- Reduce emissions from our town's municipal fleet
- Put incorporate alternative energy generation into our town's buildings
Gathering Information
In order to conduct even a very baseline energy audit you must first gather the appropriate information.
- Energy information includes:
- One year or more of electric and
- One year or more of fuel consumption/bills
- What is the total square footage of the building (or the heated and cooled portions of the building)?
- If possible, walk around your buildings and take pictures of areas that you think might be efficiency troublemakers
Once you have collected this information, then enter this information in the Portfolio Manager to see what the most inefficient building in your community may be.
Auditing
If you have reached the auditing phase of your efforts, you should now determine:
- The scope of what you would like to accomplish:
- Number of buildings you would like to audit
- How to further engage other municipal officials
- What type of alterations are you looking to make?
- Increased building efficiency through better insulation/windows, lighting, etc.
- More efficient heating/cooling equipment
- Distributed/on-site electric generation
- Investigating professional energy auditors who can provide professional services and modeling support
Auditing Tools:
RETScreen International provides a fairly advanced auditing software tool that was developed by Natural Resources Canada and is managed in partnership by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), UNEP-Global Environment Facility (GEF) and the Renewable Energy & Energy Efficiency Partnership (REEEP). According to the RETScreen website:
- "The RETScreen International Clean Energy Project Analysis Software is a unique decision support tool developed with the contribution of numerous experts from government, industry, and academia. The software, provided free-of-charge, can be used worldwide to evaluate the energy production and savings, life-cycle costs, emission reductions, financial viability and risk for various types of energy efficient and renewable energy technologies (RETs). The software also includes product, cost and climate databases, and a detailed online user manual. Other tools include: a case study based college/university-level training course; an engineering electronic textbook; and (the RETScress) Website. All of these tools are available free-of-charge in English and French, with many of the tools available in other languages."
Taking the Next Step
Once you have determined what you would like to accomplish, now it is time to engage those entities that will assist you in accomplishing that goal. If you are looking to carry out professional audits, begin (if you have not done so already) to engage municipal officials that can provide financial assistance in accomplishing this. At the same time, provide the individuals/departments that will be involved in your project with information that you have gained and the ideas you are pursuing.
