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Commercial Energy Auditor Training
- Course Outline

Course Outline

Module 1: Introduction - Basics of Energy

You’ll Learn:

  1. Where energy comes from
  2. How it gets to the business
  3. AC vs. DC power
  4. 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:

  1. How to understand heat transfer
  2. How energy bills can tell you how to tight your building envelope is
  3. 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:

  1. The different types of lighting (CFLs, LEDs, tube fluorescents, HID, and more)
  2. How to quantify exactly how much it costs to run a lamp
  3. 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:

  1. How to read electric and gas bills
  2. Why Demand Charges add large costs to the energy bill - and how to eliminate them
  3. Various electric rate schedules that can save money
  4. 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:

  1. Fundamentals of heat
  2. Different types of heat
  3. Different types of cool
  4. 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:

  1. How to calculate Watts, Volts, Amps
  2. How to distinguish between nameplate and actual rating
  3. Why efficiency ratings can save your client thousands of dollars a year.
  4. 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:

  1. Saving energy does not always mean saving money
  2. Simple payback method, Life-Cycle costs, Time Value of Money, compound interest, uniform series cash flow
  3. 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:

  1. What makes a contract a Contract
  2. The Basics of reading/writing a contract
  3. 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:

  1. How to make money doing energy audits
  2. The Pro’s and Con’s of two major methods for charging for your services
  3. 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:

  1. Which company structure is best for you, LLC, S Corp, Partnership
  2. The advantages and disadvantages of each corporation structure
  3. 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:

  1. To turn a 20 minute lunch appointment into serious money in your pocket
  2. 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

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