Energy

The Audacity of Audits - Upload Knowledge

What are Energy Audits?
Energy Audits are used to get a sense of how much energy a building uses and how much each various item in a building contributes to that use. “Energy” can mean electricity or heat sources such as heating fuels. Some audits examine both electricity and heat, while others just examine one of them.

An “energy audit” is a loose term, especially now that so many interest groups are concerned with conserving energy. Some audits are very extensive and are done by professionals from the building industry or from a non-profit environmental organization. These professionals visit a building and measure the wattage on appliances with a kilowatt-meter, record the wattage of all light bulbs, study the HVAC system, and study possible places heat can leak out of a building. They also may study heating and electric bills, among other things. Other audits may be done by students or other non-professionals and may focus on any one or a combination of the elements mentioned above. Energy audits can be done very poorly or very well. Some businesses who want to sell something to a school like a line of appliances or a building supply may conduct an audit for free.

Is “audit” a scary word to you?
An “energy audit” sounds scary to many school administrators because we, as a society, think of “audits” as implying negativity. Many of us think of all “audits” like we think of tax audits, where someone comes onto your property and tries to find something you did wrong, maybe even something illegal. If you’re someone who thinks of audits in this way, you may think of energy audits as the energy police coming to your school to find all the ways you’re wasting energy so that they can make you feel bad about it, or even worse, so they can expose you to the community as a bad environmental citizen. On the contrary, most energy audits are not supposed to be negative at all. Instead, a good audit is supposed to analyze exactly how your building is using energy and present that information to you so that it can benefit you. It can then be used to help you understand how you can conserve the building’s energy use, which usually benefits more than just the environment—it benefits the bottom line—your budget.

So what precisely are the benefits?
The first is to gain a general understanding of your energy use as a school. This includes both your electricity use and heating fuel consumption. An energy audit or profile quantifies how much energy you use and breaks down that use into various categories, so you can understand how, why, and where energy is being used. Understanding the factors of your energy use provides an additional dimension to future decision making, such as when you decide to upgrade a line of appliances, undergo renovations, or take-on additions. You can feel confident predicting the effects these changes will have on your overall energy use.

The second purpose of an energy audit or profile is to create a “baseline.” A baseline is a starting point of data from which you can measure future progress. In other words, the data gathered gives you a current snapshot of how you are using energy and exactly how much energy you are using. Every time you consider an upgrade in the building or appliances in the future, you can compare the potential improvement to the baseline and understand precisely how much of a positive impact you may make. You will have the data to be able to estimate what percentage of electricity use or how many kilowatt-hours (kwh’s) you may save. A baseline is also important as a public relations tool after you have made improvements. You then have data that you can proudly display to the district, the parents, and the taxpayers to show them how much of a difference you have made.

A final purpose of many audits is to provide you with suggestions for exactly how you might focus conservation efforts and sometimes specific solutions will be laid out.