How can you perform a walk-through energy audit?

When doing the walkthrough, I have an excel spreadsheet that utilizes the past 3 to 5 years of electrical utility data. This allows me to look at the EUI plus many other trends. It gives you a talking point with the business and their facility staff. Totally helpful.

I am always happy to see mechanical and electrical plans in addition to floor plans. If they are up to date, this can drastically cut on-site inspection time (and therefore overall cost). Additionally, if there is a building automation system (BAS) that controls HVAC and/or lighting, having access to the default setpoints, overrides, and trend data can provide valuable information will shed light on details that may not be apparent for an on-site auditor. For utility data, I would say 1 year is the bare minimum - up to 3 years is ideal since outlier months will be more apparent. Shortly after COVID, my team by default asked for pre-2020 data since many buildings were not occupied during 2020, which skewed the utility data for that year.

I would also get the energy bills in advance to understand the time of day tariff details to correlate it with the equipment operational hours during the audit to come out with an optimisation plan avoiding un necessary loads in peak time and possibility of moving peak time loads to other non peak hours for saving energy spend.

Also, while on site I'd suggest spending some time getting to know the building maintenance and HVAC/ controls service people. Let them know you are there to help them improve the overall maintenance and operation of the building in addition to saving energy. Sometimes they will point out opportunities that you would have missed or spent hours finding.

Only in buildings which are totally air conditioned, we need to check for air leaks and cracks. In nations like India, only miniscule percent of houses are air conditioned. We can check the usage of AC, the star rating and the last maintenance records to ensure optimum utilisation

I would add a "Door Blower Test" be conducted. Many residential homes must determine the air exchange loss results and to locate the Building Envelope issues.

If I am on-site when the building is occupied as it normally would be, I usually try to note what setting the occupants have the lighting set to. If all or a significant portion of the lights are off, this can be an indicator that design levels are too bright, or there is enough natural lighting in the space, and we could recommend daylighting controls to automatically control light levels. Also if lighting in spaces is left on when unoccupied, this is a clear indicator that occupancy sensors would save energy.

The auditor should check the operational regimes also, because it can signifficantly affect energy consumption. The goal is to identify an optimized operational regime that will provide acceptable comfort with minimum energy consumption. In the next stage the operational regimes should be fine-tuned to optimize the confort and energy consumption.

If the facility is using chillers and a chilled water system for cooling, make sure that chilled water temperatures are appropriate for the facility and try to push for the highest allowable temperature. All AHUs need to be operating correctly and systems are balanced. Also data centers need to be looked at closely. There can be many opportunities depending how up to date they are.

In many buildings, HVAC is the #1 contributor to overall energy consumption. Therefore, having an efficient system is paramount. In addition, understanding that HVAC load (which drives HVAC energy consumption) is dependent on the building envelope, ventilation rates, and occupant levels points to the importance to optimizing these areas as well.

Additionally, it’s been my experience that HVAC scheduling goes largely unused, due to the occupied spaces not being at set point by staff start times. Simply adding an optimized start stop schedule with dynamic adjustment will have an immediate reduction in energy usage.

I suggest one would check the time (STOPWATCH) for each faucet to deliver HOT water. Using a gallon container to collect the water in the sink. Once HOT water is received then measure the amount of ounces it took when HOT water was delivered. One could determine the waste water and distance of the pipes.

First, Inspect the Utility Service panel to determine residential Amperage load. 50, 100 and 200 AMPS is common place. The lower the Amperage the more GAS appliances were used by the builder to offset the electrical consumption to operate the house appliances.

Apply level switch for water pumps for automatic cut-off to avoid overflows. Try implementing motion-sensor lightings in the building areas where constant lighting is not required.