Energy
How to conduct an Energy Audit - Take Some Action
An energy audit is the survey, collection, and analysis of how a building uses
energy. Energy audits sometimes also consider how a building’s energy use
affects the environment, whether through emissions of
greenhouse gases or by emissions of all types of air pollutants.
There are also various sizes of audits, including macro and micro. Macro
audits encompass all forms of energy use, including heating fuels and
electricity, as well trends in how that energy is used and all the factors
contributing to it like the
building envelope, the efficiency of the HVAC system, the water system, and
the efficiency performance of all appliances. Macro audits may also offer
solutions for long-term changes that can enhance the energy performance of a
building. Micro audits, on the other hand, often look at a more narrow
aspect of the energy use. For example, they might consider just the
electricity bills and what kinds of lightbulbs are used, or just the heating
bills and analyze trends that seem out of place.
Tips on conducting an audit
1.) Decide an objective—What do you hope to accomplish by having an audit of
your school? Do you want it to primarily be an educational experience
involving some students? Do you want it to be a serious audit providing
useful information for you to make improvements in order to save money and
energy? Or do you want it to provide very useful information, but still
involve students?
2.) Decide who’s going to do it— The educational audits we link to in this
section provide a great experience for students of various ages. But, if
you want to really obtain some useful information for improving your school’s
energy efficiency, you should know that successful audits require a lot of time,
energy, and attention to detail. A very useful audit can be conducted by
older students and staff with limited expertise, but keep in mind that it may be
limited in how thorough the data are and also how helpful the recommendations
for improvements are. Electricity information is fairly easy to understand
with some patience and research. But, if you want to understand how to cut down
on heating costs and you don’t have a custodian who happens to be well versed in
HVAC systems or the building’s structural components, you may want to consider a
professional. The other major benefit of a professional is that they will
be able to offer you specific suggestions for how to improve your energy
efficiency. They will also utilize special equipment such as
blower doors, which measure leaks in the building, and
infrared scanning. Then if you do decide to go with a professional, you’ll
have to decide between two different types: those out to make money, namely
contractors, utility companies, or other businesses, and those just looking to
help you or the environment, such as non-profits and state-sponsored
organizations. Letting a business do the audit is not necessarily a bad
idea, but you want to do research to make sure that they are not going to just
try to emphasize potential improvements that only benefit them, while
skimping on the other useful data. The Department of Energy lists some
ways to find and prepare for a professional.
3.) Develop a specific objective— What do you really want to find out? Keep in
mind that you may not know all the possible savings that could be available to
you if you narrow an audit’s objective too much to begin with. But, also, you
have to think reasonably about what kind of data would be useful in your
particular situation. For example, do you spend a lot more money on
heating than you think you should? Are you getting ready to make an
upgrade in a certain area of the building or with a certain line of appliances?
Are you interested in
renewables eventually? There are countless types of energy audits, and
one size definitely doesn’t fit all. Make sure the one you choose is one
that will give you at least the data you think you want, and more is even
better.
4.) Get advice from someone who’s done it!-- If staff or students are doing this
for the first time, the best thing you can do to prepare is to talk to someone
who’s done an audit before. Even if you’re confident that the people doing
the audit will be diligent, there are always pitfalls they can avoid, especially
in saving massive amounts of time analyzing the data!
5.) Keep data collection universal-- Whether one person or twelve people are
doing the audit, make sure everyone is using the same exact system to collect
and compile data. For example, it might be easy enough to count how many
computers are in each room, but have you discussed ahead of time whether or not
you’ll note if the computer was off, on, or in sleeping mode, and what notation
will you use to show that? Similarly, if you’re counting lights, does
everyone know they are supposed to count actual bulbs, or just fixtures?
And do you have a system for collecting data on clearly labeled sheets that are
all set up the same way? Only half the work of an audit is collecting
data, the other half is compiling it and analyzing it, so the messier it is, the
longer it’s going to take to figure it all out, and the less precise it’s going
to be.
6.) Finally, be aware of helpful tools-- Any audit would be served well by
a
watt-meter, which measures how much electricity an appliance uses simply by
plugging the appliance into the watt-meter and then plugging the watt-meter into
an outlet. Another helpful tool is a
light-meter which
measures the level of light in a certain location. This is useful for
gauging whether or not a room is using more light than it needs. Different
state standards dictate how much light is needed in a classroom. Also be
aware of the internet resources listed in our next section. For example,
if there are items that you can’t measure with a watt-meter because they are too
big or because they cycle like a refrigerator, you can look up the average
energy consumption for that type of item using online wattage lists such as
this one.
Useful resources for doing your own audit
Audits that measure pollutants
If you’re interested in approximating your school’s
carbon dioxide emissions or other greenhouse gases, see the
Carbon Footprint section.
If you’re interested in approximating the emissions of other prominent air
pollutants in addition to
carbon dioxide, then check out one of these pollution calculators
recommended by the
Alliance to Save Energy…
This
handy pollution
calculator from
Abraxas Energy
Consulting takes your electricity consumption or heating fuel consumption
numbers and compares two years. For example, the current year can be
compared against the baseline year, and it tells you how much of each pollutant
in pounds was produced by the energy you used. This is especially a great
asset for when you want to show how much you’ve improved after renovations or
upgrades because you can show exactly how many pounds of each pollutant you
prevented from being released into the atmosphere and the environment.
This calculator makes approximations for the following pollutants:
carbon
dioxide,
VOCs,
nitrous oxides,
carbon monoxide,
sulfur
dioxide,
mercury,
cadmium,
lead, mercury
compounds, cadmium compounds and lead compounds.
The
Cleaner and Greener® “Pollution from Electricity Use” Calculator is a
quicker deal. It takes the electricity consumption amount of one monthly
bill or your annual amount and it simply tells you how much of these major
pollutants was released:
carbon
dioxide,
nitrogen oxides,
sulfur
dioxide, and
mercury.
Do-it-yourself Energy Audits for staff or
students
Here are some different styles of energy audits that we recommend. Some of
them are more for an educational activity for your students rather than an
effective way to understand your school’s energy use. Others are more
practical audits that the staff or older students may be able to complete with
some hard work and determination. Most of these are geared toward a home,
but can easily be adapted to work for a school. Just remember to add
things that may be in a school that aren’t in a home.
Fun & Educational Audit Exercises
-
National Teacher Enhancement Project’s
Middle School Home Energy Audit—This audit is designed for middle-schoolers
and utilizes classroom guidance and activities in order to teach students about
energy use. It includes some built-in resources for students to learn
complete with little quizzes to gauge their knowledge of it.
-
Thirteen Ed Online’s
Energy
Audit–-This audit is designed for middle school or high school students and
provides a fairly thorough understanding of energy use. As an added bonus,
it is laid out very nicely with digestible steps.
-
Alliance to Save Energy’s
Home
Energy Audit–-This audit takes the form of a building inspector exercise
designed to be done only with teacher’s guidance. Some if it is
incorporated into lesson plans.
-
Alliance to Save Energy’s
Watt Does it Cost to Use it by Mark Zeismer—This is an exercise in measuring
the cost of different appliances that consume electricity. It’s designed
to give students an idea of how much it costs to use electricity.
- Earth Day Network’s
School Energy
Audit: A Bright Idea—This is more of a string of activities than an audit,
and it’s benefit is that it covers a number of different topics besides just
energy, including bills, lights, water, food, and recycling.
Downright Serious Audits
-
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s first
web-based do-it-yourself energy audit tool—This useful online audit tool
also offers vital information about how to take action to make improvements, and
it has an “ask the expert service.”
-
Seattle City Light’s
Do-it-yourself Home Energy Audit—This audit is very professional, helpful,
and even lays out which tools you need before getting started.
-
Department of Energy’s
Diligent Walk-through Audit—This is some guidance for how to do a quick
check of your energy use and by most standards wouldn’t be considered an audit.
But, we include here because it’s still useful, especially if you can’t get an
actual audit done. The walk-through tells you some tips for looking at
heat use, air leaks, light use, etc.
Want to track energy use and improvements across multiple buildings
district-wide?
Consider using the Portfolio
Manager offered by Energy Star.
It helps you neatly monitor energy use and water use in multiple buildings.
It also helps you plan the most cost-effective strategy for improvements.
You can compare an improvement in one building to another building in your
portfolio. Best of all, the EPA offers the incentive of recognition if you
have an exemplary energy efficient building.
Take the tour to see all of Portfolio Manager’s benefits.
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