What you Should Know When Hiring an Energy-Saving Consultant

What you Should Know When Hiring an Energy-Saving Consultant

With the increasing energy cost, businesses as well as homeowners are working hard to become energy independent. However, this is not an easy task considering that during building and construction, contractors often ignore energy-saving techniques that increase energy efficiency. In most cases, you find that you might be interested in knowing how much energy is being saved at your home. This can be done through a comprehensive energy audit. The audit need not be regular but it is at least necessary as you will get to understand the level of energy saving and areas that you can improve to save more energy. Hiring an energy manager to carry out a comprehensive audit with regards to energy management is necessary. The role of the energy manager is to carry out an efficiency assessment and provide recommendations with regards to energy efficiency. When working with an energy manager or energy consultant, below are some key factors that you should take into consideration.

Final Report Must Have Estimates
Once you hire an energy manager, you can expect a detailed report regarding energy efficiency at your home or commercial building. However, there are key features that the final report should contain that people often ignore. The report should have a proposed estimate of how much will be saved in energy cost monthly and annually when a certain energy-saving measure is implemented. Make sure you ask the energy manager to provide estimates of energy saving after the recommended energy saving measures have been implemented. Apart from the estimates, it is also important to have the crossed effects and these too should be provided by the energy manager. The crossed effects refer to instances where a specific energy saving measure has an effect on another. An example of crossed effects is the lighting in a building is replaced. Such a replacement will of course cause a reduction in the heat generated which further implies that the cost of cooling the building during summers will reduce significantly. However, such a replacement will also increase the cost of heating the building during winter.


Ask for a Timeline for the Final Report
Most energy managers are very professional when it comes to how they carry out energy audit. However, this should not be assumed to be always the case. There are certain energy consultants who can really frustrate your efforts and in particular in the submission of the final report. You ind that in most cases, you will be provided with a preliminary report. However, this report does not cover a lot of details about how energy efficient a building is but will highlight some of the key areas where there are issues. The final report on the other hand is the one that contains the recommendations with regards to the measures you are supposed to take in order to reduce the cost of energy. These measures are the reason why the audit is carried out in the first place which makes the final report a very important document. Make sure that the energy manager provides a well-detailed timeline regarding when the final report will be submitted.