Commercial Energy Auditor Training
- Course Outline
Course Outline
Module 1: Introduction - Basics of Energy
You’ll Learn:
- Where energy comes from
- How it gets to the business
- AC vs. DC power
- What is a Watt
Reducing watts by a few percentages can result in significant dollar savings for your clients
Module 2: Building Envelope
You’ll Learn:
- How to understand heat transfer
- How energy bills can tell you how to tight your building envelope is
- All about insulation - the different types, uses and the R-Value
Aluminum transfers heat at over 900 times the rate of wood. Reducing the thermal bridge in a building can save owners hundreds of dollars in heating and cooling costs
Module 3: Lighting
You’ll Learn:
- The different types of lighting (CFLs, LEDs, tube fluorescents, HID, and more)
- How to quantify exactly how much it costs to run a lamp
- How to significantly lower energy bills
Lighting can account for almost 60% of energy use of some facilities. With simple lighting changes you can potentially save business owners 10% or more a year!
Module 4: Energy Bills
You’ll Learn:
- How to read electric and gas bills
- Why Demand Charges add large costs to the energy bill - and how to eliminate them
- Various electric rate schedules that can save money
- How to read a meter
Reducing Demand Charges on a small facility can save them almost $150 a month, or $1,800 a year!
Module 5: Heating and Cooling
You’ll Learn:
- Fundamentals of heat
- Different types of heat
- Different types of cool
- How to determine the conditioning units
Increasing the SEER rating of an air conditioning system from 8 to 14 can reduce the operating cost from about $130 per ton of cooling, to about $74 per ton. For a savings of $56 per ton
Module 6: Machines and Motors
You’ll Learn:
- How to calculate Watts, Volts, Amps
- How to distinguish between nameplate and actual rating
- Why efficiency ratings can save your client thousands of dollars a year.
- Variable speed drives and why they are critical to energy efficiency.
Changing a motor from 24 hp to 15 hp can result in savings of over $3,400 a year.
Module 7: Economics of Energy
You’ll Learn:
- Saving energy does not always mean saving money
- Simple payback method, Life-Cycle costs, Time Value of Money, compound interest, uniform series cash flow
- How to calculate the Return on Investment and determine Future Value of a project.
Motor A may cost $200 less than Motor B but when you do a Life-Cycle cost, Motor A actually costs $1,500 more than Motor B - a savings you can see!
Module 8: Basics of Contracts
You’ll Learn:
- What makes a contract a Contract
- The Basics of reading/writing a contract
- What constitutes a Breach and how it is determined.
You actually enter into contracts every day, learn what they are and how you can understand them.
Module 9: Making Money
You’ll Learn:
- How to make money doing energy audits
- The Pro’s and Con’s of two major methods for charging for your services
- Strategic negotiating points that will ensure you close the deal.
A $5,000 investment in the bank would increase $3,145 in 10 years. A $5,000 investment in energy efficiency could turn into $55,100 in 10 years! Educating your client is key to your success.
Module 10: Incorporating & Insurance
You’ll Learn:
- Which company structure is best for you, LLC, S Corp, Partnership
- The advantages and disadvantages of each corporation structure
- The basic types of insurance available and how they apply to energy auditing.
Get virtually the same protections as the Blue Chip companies for a fraction of the cost without the restrictive procedural requirements.
Module 11: Immersion Module
You’ll Learn:
- To turn a 20 minute lunch appointment into serious money in your pocket
- To identify easy low hanging fruit that can make energy savings easy to do and very lucrative.
If you do nothing but focus on “low-hanging-fruit”, you can make a great living saving energy. This example shows how you can save a restaurant over $1,000 a year by making some simple changes