One type of audit that we don’t usually hear of or that is not usually common is an energy audit. Here, we will be learning abut what an energy audit is and what it it all about, as well as its different types, why is it important and many more. Also included are energy audit report samples and templates that you may use as reference while going through this article. You may check them out below.
Regular audits are conducted to ensure that companies are compliant to certain laws and standards that are required in the industry or business they are involved in. Audits come in different types based on the different areas that they must cover or examine. There is an audit conducted for checking compliance to safety, for clinical processes, for business and the most common type of audit is one that done to check or examine accounts or finances.
What is being investigated or assessed in an energy audit is the history of an organization’s current energy use. An energy audit is conducted with the aim of determining and quantifying how much energy has been wasted by the organization and its activities. Just like all other audits, one of the objectives of an energy audit is to help make changes and improvements to the organization in terms of they they utilize energy. Through the audit, a lot of companies or businesses’ were able to cut down and save on their energy costs.
A certified energy auditor is the right person to conduct an energy audit. They are the appropriate people who can conduct a legit energy audit and provide a reliable and useful energy audit report. An energy audit report is where all the details related to the energy audit is recorded. The details in this formal document, includes the specific activities or tasks done during the audit, the findings and the data gathered during the audit, the methods used in auditing and the result or the outcome of the audit.
Energy audit reports are studied to find ways on how energy consumption of buildings, establishments and companies can be significantly reduced while still maintaining comfort of the employees or occupants,and without affecting business processes. It also helps point out the areas or energy uses that should be the priority, which is based on the cost effectiveness of such usage and other energy savings opportunities that are available.
There are four types of energy audit and they are benchmarking, walk-through audit, general audit, and Investment-grade audit. Each of these types of energy audit are conducted on situations or instances where they are applicable. Let us get to know more about them.
This type of energy audit is concerned with issues about characterizing a building with the use of performance indexes. These indexes are comfort indexes, energy indexes and energy demand indexes. The reference consumption of another building is compared to that of the measured consumption of the building being audited to help them be able to identify unacceptable or excessive costs of energy.
The walk-through audits is the simplest and quickest type of energy audit, which is done to identify the ares in energy usage where there is too much or excessive wastage of energy and areas of energy inefficiency. The activities involved in this type of audit, includes a brief review of the utility bills of the facility and other operations based data, short interview of the site-operating personnel, familiarizing the building operations by doing a walk-through of the entire facility. Other alternate names used to refer to a walk-through audit report are simple audit, screening audit and preliminary audit.
The general energy audit is a detailed energy audit where very specific details and information are blathered. It is also referred to as a site energy audit, mini audit, detailed energy audit and complete energy audit, so called because of how detailed it is when it comes to the information gathered about the facility’s operations and hoe it evaluates energy conservation measures used by the building.
During a general energy audit, the utility bills of the building that is worth 12 to 36 months is collected and then analyzed. Through this, all possible and feasible ways of energy conserving methods that are applicable to the facility is determined. An in-depth interview of the site-personnel is also conducted during the audit. This is so that the auditors can better understand the energy consumption systems of the facility as well as consumption patterns both short and long term.
This is a detailed type of audit done so that facility upgrades can be done to the facility’s energy infrastructure and so that it can compete with capital funding. It is basically an audit about industrial operations, maintenance costs, and other energy related operations of a facility. The audit provides results such as a balance in the energy and real energy demand.
It is necessary to know the different types of energy audit because it helps identify which type of audit is applicable and appropriate to a particular building or facility, thus allows the correct data to be gathered and the right energy saving measures to be implemented. You may also want to check out other audit related articles that we offer, like Laboratory Audit Report Samples & Templates, Brand Audit Report Template, and Financial Audit Report Samples & Templates.
