What Is a Commercial Building Energy Audit?

A lot of people might understand the basic concept of a commercial building energy audit—an evaluation of how energy efficient a commercial building is—but, what really goes into an energy audit? What can be gained from conducting one? And how do you practically put all of the information obtained from an energy audit to use?

An energy audit is often the first step in making your commercial building more efficient. The goal of an energy audit is of course to identify energy-saving opportunities, but also to increase asset values, lower ownership costs and promote environmental stewardship, human comfort, health, and safety. This is done by taking a comprehensive look at the energy consumption data associated with a commercial building, as well as the energy and resource-consuming infrastructures, to identify fiscally responsible, sustainable energy efficiency measures that reduce energy usage and carbon emissions.

Nuts and Bolts of Commercial Building Energy Audit

More specifically, the energy audit examines all of the major factors affecting energy consumption by performing the following:

1) Utility bill analysis based on historical data provided by the client:

• Summary of the utility service feeds
• Summary of the areas and processes served by each utility service feed
• Spreadsheet analysis of the utility data and provide corresponding charts
• Determination of average load factors
• Summary of the billing rate schedules

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