Firms may also provide insights on systems most beneficial to electrify, as well as make recommendations on appropriate grid-interactive technologies to install. Energy audit services are also offered by energy services companies (ESCOs), energy consultants, and engineering firms. The most common and standardized audit approach is offered by the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE), which has developed three levels of audits that increase in detail, depth of analysis, and cost.Īs a starting point, many utilities offer no- or low-cost energy assessments. FEDS is an easy-to-use tool to evaluate building energy use and identify cost-effective savings opportunities.Įnergy Audits – Onsite energy audits provide a deeper analysis of a building’s energy performance and energy savings opportunities and typically involve an onsite, whole-building evaluation of current energy usage relative to prospective energy usage that could be achieved through improved operations and maintenance procedures and upgrades to building systems, such as lighting, HVAC, and the building envelope.Įnergy audits range in rigor and complexity, ranging from low-cost or limited-detail analyses to high-cost, highly detailed analyses known as investment grade audits (IGAs). Key Resource: PNNL’s Facility Energy Decision System (FEDS) can also help identify good energy audit candidates from a building portfolio.Key Resource: DOE’s Building Energy Asset Score assesses the energy efficiency of the physical structure and major equipment of a building using information inputted by the user and identifies opportunities to invest in energy efficiency upgrades.Decision makers can reference these values to identify buildings that are good candidates for building audits and upgrades. Within a portfolio of buildings, a high building EUI signals an opportunity for energy savings relative to other buildings. national median reference values for EUI across common building types. For a single building, ENERGY STAR provides U.S. Key Resource: ENERGY STAR® Portfolio Manager® converts inputted data into actionable metrics, such as energy use intensity (EUI).Once building and equipment characteristics and energy consumption data have been collected and a baseline established, the building’s energy performance can be compared, or benchmarked, to similar buildings or established norms (e.g., a reference building built to a standard energy code), with the goal of providing analysis that can inform performance improvement. Buildings that are underperforming compared to similar buildings are good candidates for an energy audit and upgrades. Key Resources: ENERGY STAR® Portfolio Manager® and DOE’s Building Energy Asset Score are online platforms to collect and organize these datapoints.This activity includes gathering historic energy usage and costs (e.g., reviewing past energy bills) tabulating building information such as size and age and capturing other relevant context including weather, building-use patterns (e.g., hours of operation), and known age of energy consuming building equipment (e.g., HVAC systems). Establishing an energy performance baseline will help you understand how your buildings are performing. This starts with a simple, yet thorough assessment to measure performance and identify potential improvements. Improving the energy performance of a building begins with understanding how that building is performing today. Understanding how much energy your buildings are using and how that compares to similar types of buildings is an important first step to understanding where energy efficiency improvements could be made and how much opportunity for savings they could offer. These savings can be leveraged to save taxpayer dollars, supplement limited operating budgets, and pay for other public priorities. In many buildings, energy costs can be reduced by 20 percent or more through the identification and implementation of energy conservation measures (ECMs). These evaluations can also identify aging or faulty equipment (reducing the occurrence of urgent upgrades motivated by equipment failures) and electrification opportunities (improving indoor air quality and reducing onsite-generated GHG emissions). Proactive building analysis afford decision makers with time to design more comprehensive projects that maximize energy and cost savings. A carefully designed, targeted energy retrofit can pay for itself through energy savings and, depending on how the project is financed, can incur no debt and result in minimal disruption to an organization’s operating and capital budgets. Investing in energy-efficiency retrofits offers significant opportunities and benefits, including energy, water, and cost savings, a shorter deferred-maintenance backlog, improved occupant comfort, and progress toward overarching energy- and greenhouse gas (GHG)- reduction goals.
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