How to perform a basic energy waste audit in your facility

It’s a frustrating feeling to know that your business is likely wasting energy, but not knowing where to begin to solve the problem. You might be paying for hidden costs on your utility bill or seeing signs of inefficiency in your machinery.

But where do you start?

You don’t need expensive equipment or a team of consultants to begin. You can perform a basic energy waste audit in your own facility today with a clipboard and a bit of detective work. The goal is to uncover potential problems and gather the initial clues that will help you prioritize your next steps.

Here is a simple, three-step guide to conducting your own energy waste audit.

Step 1: Scrutinize your utility bill for clues

Your monthly utility bill is a treasure trove of information. Before you do anything else, grab the last three months of bills and put on your detective hat.

Look for penalties: Scan the line items for terms like “power factor penalty,” “reactive power,” “kVAR,” or “demand charges.” If you see any of these, you have a definitive, documented problem that is costing you money every month.
Compare consumption: Compare your total energy consumption from month to month. Look for unexplained spikes that don’t correlate with a change in production. An unusually high energy use might be a sign of inefficiency.
Check peak demand: Note your peak demand hours. If your power factor is poor, these peak periods will often have a higher demand than necessary, leading to higher costs.

Step 2: Visually inspect key equipment

Next, it’s time to walk your facility and look for the physical symptoms of energy waste. You’ll want to focus on equipment with large electric motors, like air compressors, HVAC systems, and heavy-duty machinery.

Listen for “humming”: An unusually loud humming from your motors or transformers could indicate excess current flow, a classic sign of a poor power factor.
Feel for overheating: Carefully feel the casings of your transformers and motors. They should be warm, but if they are excessively hot to the touch, it’s a major red flag that they are working harder than necessary.
Look for diminished performance: Talk to your operators. Are certain machines running slower, experiencing more breakdowns, or needing frequent maintenance? These are all symptoms that can be tied back to poor energy quality.

Step 3: The next step – accurately measuring your power factor

Your audit has given you some valuable clues, but to truly solve the problem, you need to move beyond guesswork. You need hard data. The only way to truly understand and improve your power factor is to measure it continuously.

This traditionally required expensive, complex, and time-consuming solutions:

You would have to hire a costly consultant for a one-off assessment.
Or you would need to invest in hard-wired, permanent monitoring systems that require complex installation and extensive setup.

Both of these options have been out of reach for many SMEs, making continuous power factor monitoring a privilege, not a standard.

But what if there was an easier way? A smarter way? A simpler way to get the data you need to take control?

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