Energy Audit

1. I often received feed backs and remarks from many people especially from industrial and commercial building sectors that energy audit is very costly.
No doubt they are right especially in our country where energy auditing is not a regulated field yet.

2. Energy audit can be very costly only when everything will be done the the external experts or consultants. As some came from energy auditing field, I used to charge our the client based on scope of works and outputs expected to be delivered by the client. For some clients, they have defined clearly what they need from the auditors and this is where the cost to have their services in the whole energy process will be much much less.

3. The understanding about the energy audit itself is important before we decided to have an energy audit. Fees to conduct the audit will depend the type of energy audit that they need because each type of audit will require different level of depth and details that need to be audited and analyzed.

4. What is energy audit?
Briefly it can defined as a systematic methods to identify information anda data of the supply and the usage of energy which will be used to identify measures and actions to be taken to save energy. Implemented measures will result to the increase in the energy efficiency performance of the plant.

5. Energy audit can be done at the plant, system or equipment level. The bigger the level, the bigger the tasks to be carried out and the higher the costs will be involved.

6. Energy audit generally can be categorized into two types:
i) Simple audit - desktop analysis for common data and information available (bills, invoices), less measurements and site data collections, saving measures will not involve any cost or low cost
ii) Detailed/Comprehensive audit- more detailed data analysis from available data and more measurements, high cost saving measures, require detail financial analysis

7. Pre requirements to conduct energy audit:

i) The Commitment to implement audit findings- it will be a waste of time and resources if no actions taken
ii) The understanding of the energy audit type, process and activities- to identify who can perform each task
iii) The level of details expected from energy saving recommendations.
- more details analysis required, more cost may be involved depending on type of audit

8. Main requirements to perform an energy audit:
i) Energy Auditor - Internal or external or that combination of the two.
ii) Energy audit equipment - mainly data measurement and recording devices
iii)Allocation of budget and time
iv) Availability and accessibility of energy data and information

9. Knowing some information on energy audit itself will help to decide on what type of energy audit that need to be performed at the plant. In the end it will decide on what is expected from the audit to achieve the ultimate objective for the plant and definitely will affect costs to be incurred.

10. Energy audit would not save energy but it will prescribe the most accurate approaches and methods to be us used to save energy. However, a good audit not necessarily too costly although it may involve external parties such as a consultant.

11. The ideal way is, utilize the internal personnel by giving them some training on how to conduct energy audit since they know the plant better than anyone. Get assistance from external parties only on a need basis especially on certain subject matters such as new technologies, specific data analysis and etc where normally they are the real experts.