What Is a Building Energy Audit?

Increasing a commercial building’s energy efficiency enables business owners to reduce spending and increase the useful life of their building systems. Having a commercial building energy audit is often the first step to minimizing energy consumption and maximizing operations. Learn more about the steps involved and elements inspected during an audit report.

Why Do You Need a Building Energy Audit?

You can’t expect significant improvement in your energy costs and performance unless you know the existing condition of heating and cooling equipment. An energy audit thoroughly inspects your building automation system and provides key insights into how the equipment operates and how much energy it consumes. These details pinpoint improvement opportunities and allow business owners to shrink utility bills through practicing proactive maintenance.

Energy Audit Checklist for Commercial Buildings

A building energy audit carefully examines the major components that impact energy efficiency. Here are some items that a technician will inspect:

Lighting systems
Electric motors
Air leakage
Insulation
Water heating components
Business heating systems
Cooling equipment
Electronics
Doors and windows
Energy habits

Data produced by these items play a key role in determining their overall operational efficiency.

How To Do an Energy Audit of a Building

While each commercial building has unique features that impact the overall process, most energy audits follow these steps:

Step 1: Evaluation

A professional energy auditor visits your business and conducts a thorough walk-through of your building’s interior and exterior. During this step, they’ll carefully analyze specific elements of your building automation system that play a critical role in the overall energy efficiency of your building.

Also, the auditor will study the heating and cooling systems and other energy consuming systems. Finally, they’ll count how many doors and windows your building has and take the necessary external measurements.

Step 2: Investigation.

There are many ways for the auditor to investigate the current performance and operation of your facility. These can range from simple examination of current performance vs original design, a review and benchmark of utility bills, all the way to taking instrument rated tests of key equipment and systems. Each client’s objectives and need for precision are unique and so it is good to know that a wide spectrum of investigation and testing methods are at hand to help you reach your goals.

The utility bills of your existing building unlock a treasure of data. At this time clients with a multi-layered network of energy and utility meters find more depth and precision in the calculations for cost and savings opportunities. However even with basic utility meter data a great deal of insight can be obtained about the building’s performance and opportunities for improvement.

Step 3: Evaluation

After collecting data and completing a variety of tests the performance of existing building systems is analyzed. These insights are then matched with outcomes that have come from studying recent energy bills. From here the auditor writes a full report that includes recommendations to improve energy efficiency, building comfort, and asset preservation.. Implementing these suggestions helps companies enhance their HVAC equipment and reduce long-term costs.

When is the last time you’ve had a building energy audit performed? If you can’t remember, then it’s time to schedule one. Contact BuildingLogiX to talk to one of our experts, and learn the benefits of our auditing process.

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Why Have BuildingLogiX Perform Your Building Energy Audit?

Finding the right company to perform your building energy audit is essential for maximizing its effectiveness. The BuildingLogiX team understands that each facility is a snowflake and features unique characteristics that impact how it consumes energy, including:

Age
Design
System Application
Orientation on the land
Local climate and geography
Regional utility costs and rebate programs

We also believe creating a high-performing facility is a never-ending quest that requires constant monitoring. Our team works with building owners to understand their challenges when operating and maintaining their building automation systems. From there, we follow our detailed process to determining energy usage and pinpoint improvement opportunities:

Information Gathering

Our energy audits start with a comprehensive information-gathering session where our experts collect current and historical data to deliver a full scope of your energy usage. Along with studying recent utility bills, we also evaluate your existing meter infrastructure, building systems, building envelope and even gather details from any alternative energy sources, including:

Solar energy
Wind energy
Biomass incineration

Understanding Your Infrastructure

BuildingLogiX’s team takes time to study your energy infrastructure’s layout. We take notes on the age, maintenance history, current operations, and recent upgrades to determine potential improvement opportunities.

Studying Existing Controls

The type of building automation system can play a major role in the energy efficiency of your building. Our team has experience with all major systems and thoroughly inspects existing controls to fully understand your environment.

Capturing Energy Consumption Data

Your building automation system produces significant amounts of data that can be used to provide key insight into improvement recommendations. Our team studies system level data and total consumption rates to pinpoint trends that reduce usage.

Defining Goals

Setting short- and long-term goals allows us to measure progress and build a successful program. Whether you have some goals or none, our team is available to help understand your motivation and develop a timeline.

Let Our Connected Building Services Enhance Your Building Energy Audit

So you’ve performed an audit and set energy benchmarks—now what? While a commercial building energy audit is a reactive tool, leveraging the benefits of a proactive solution allows you to maximize the results. BuildingLogiX’s Connected Building Services (CBS) lets businesses create a mechanism that provides continuous energy consumption and goals on a proactive basis. Using the BuildingLogiX Data eXchange (BDX), your team receives valuable insight and actionable information that assists with the following:

Fault Detection

Our Fault Detection and Diagnostics software increases the useful life of equipment by uncovering new and recurring problems and alerting your team to the issues. This proactive approach lets your maintenance staff repair minor issues and prevents breakdowns.

Chiller Plant Optimization

Chiller plants are often the largest energy consumers for commercial buildings. Our BDX platform continuously monitors your chiller plants and generates easy to read graphical performance that allow your technicians to pinpoint developing problems.

Contact BuildingLogiX today to learn more about our building energy audit program and how CBS provides the data that allows business owners to maximize return.

What Is a Building Energy Audit?

Why Do You Need a Building Energy Audit?

Energy Audit Checklist for Commercial Buildings

How To Do an Energy Audit of a Building

Step 1: Evaluation

Step 2: Investigation.

Step 3: Evaluation

Why Have BuildingLogiX Perform Your Building Energy Audit?

Information Gathering

Understanding Your Infrastructure

Studying Existing Controls

Capturing Energy Consumption Data

Defining Goals

Let Our Connected Building Services Enhance Your Building Energy Audit

Fault Detection

Chiller Plant Optimization

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