What an energy audit covers, how audit levels differ, the measures that typically pay back fastest, and what a bankable audit report should contain.
An energy audit establishes how much energy a facility uses, where it goes, and which interventions reduce it at what cost. The value is in the baseline: without measured consumption, every savings claim downstream is an assumption, and no lender will finance an assumption.
Audits are graded by depth. Choosing the right level is the first decision, because a walk-through audit costs a fraction of an investment-grade audit and answers a completely different question.
Levels follow the ASHRAE convention used by most lenders and energy service providers.
A site visit, utility bill analysis, and benchmarking against comparable facilities. Output is a list of low-cost and no-cost measures plus an indication of where deeper study is justified. Typical effort: one to two days. Use it to decide whether a full audit is worth commissioning.
Systematic measurement of major loads, equipment inventory, operating-schedule review, and an end-use breakdown of consumption. Each recommended measure carries estimated savings, capital cost, and simple payback. This is the level most retrofit decisions are made on.
Extended metering, hourly load modelling, and engineering-grade cost estimates suitable for large capital commitments or performance contracts. Savings uncertainty is quantified. Required when the investment is large enough that a 20% error in the savings estimate changes the decision.
Post-implementation verification against the audit baseline, typically following IPMVP conventions. M&V is what turns projected savings into demonstrated savings — and it is what lenders and performance contractors rely on to release payment.
The sequence is the same at every level; only the depth of each phase changes.
Twelve to twenty-four months of utility bills, tariff structure, production or occupancy data, equipment lists, and drawings. Bill analysis alone often reveals tariff and power-factor savings before anyone visits the site.
Walk-down of major systems, nameplate capture, operating-hour verification, and temporary metering of significant loads to build a measured end-use breakdown rather than an estimated one.
Baseline normalisation for weather and production, end-use disaggregation, and modelling of each candidate measure including interactive effects between measures.
Measures ranked by payback and by capital required, with an implementation sequence that respects budget cycles and operational constraints.
Estimating consumption from equipment ratings and assumed operating hours produces errors large enough to reverse an investment decision. Metering the top loads costs little and changes the credibility of everything downstream.
Efficient lighting reduces cooling load; a chiller upgrade changes the savings from controls. Summing measure savings independently overstates the total, often by ten to twenty percent.
Without normalising for weather, production volume, or occupancy, post-implementation comparison is meaningless — and any dispute about delivered savings becomes unresolvable.
A list of twenty measures with no phasing rarely gets implemented. Prioritisation against actual budget cycles is part of the deliverable, not an afterthought.
An energy audit is a structured assessment of how a building or facility uses energy. It combines utility bill analysis, site survey, and measurement to establish a consumption baseline, break that consumption down by end use, and identify measures that reduce it — each costed with estimated savings and payback.
A Level 1 walk-through audit uses bills and a site visit to identify obvious opportunities. A Level 2 audit adds systematic measurement and an end-use breakdown, with costed savings for each measure — this is the level most retrofit decisions use. A Level 3 investment-grade audit adds extended metering, hourly modelling, and quantified savings uncertainty for large capital or performance-contract decisions.
A Level 1 audit on a single facility is typically one to two days on site with a report within two weeks. A Level 2 audit generally takes two to six weeks depending on facility complexity and metering duration. Level 3 audits extend further because they require metering across representative operating conditions, often several months.
It varies with facility type and existing condition, but a first audit on a facility that has not been assessed before commonly identifies measures worth 10-30% of annual energy cost, with a meaningful share in low-cost operational and control measures that pay back in under two years. The audit's job is to separate those from the capital-intensive measures and sequence both.
We deliver energy audits at all three levels for commercial, industrial, and public-sector facilities — measured baselines, end-use breakdowns, costed measures, and an implementation roadmap that fits your budget cycle. Where the outcome is a financed retrofit, the report is structured to satisfy lender technical review from the start.
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Send us twelve months of bills and a description of the site — we will tell you which audit level fits.
