How Important is Energy Audit to your next Solar project?

Energy Audit is the determination of the energy requirements for a building. It is a careful examination of the electrical loads. This is crucial for stand-alone system which are commonly seen in Nigeria. ENERGY AUDIT helps prevent over sizing of the system, safe guarding your electrical appliances from damaging from inappropriate power surge and it generally saves your cost.

The main aim of a Solar Energy Audit is to know the energy demand of the client.

An energy audit is not a design or works specification. However, data from an energy audit is required for the designing of a solar system solution. Without an accurate energy audit, it’s seemingly impossible to design a sustainable solar system.

Things to consider during Solar Energy Audit

• List of electrical appliances to be powered by the solar system.
• Power rating of the Electrical appliances in Watt.
• Daily running hours of the appliances.
• Total energy consumption of the building.

 

Total Energy Consumption = Quantity of electrical appliance x Power rating of appliance x daily running hours.

 Look at this simply illustration below:

A house in Nigeria has the following electrical appliance usage:

 

1 x 10-Watt LED bulb used 4 hours per day.

1 x 70-Watt fan used for 2 hours per day.

1 x 75-Watt refrigerator that runs 12 hours per day.

1 x 150-Watt Television used for 6 hours per day

1 x 150-Watt Miscellaneous load used 6 hours per day

 

Calculate the energy demand

Total appliance use = (10 W x 4 hours) + (70 W x 2 hours) + (75 W x 12 hours) + (150 W x 6 hours) + (150 W x 6 hours)

= 2,890 wh/day

Total energy consumed daily = 2,890 Wh.

The Merits of Solar Energy Audit

1. It provides the data needed for the appropriate system design.
2. It helps identify opportunities to reduce energy use
3. It helps reduce the capital cost
4. It will help the technicians to position and capacity of the solar inverter the solar arrays /solar panels.
5. An Energy Audit helps ascertain the back-up time of the solar storage.

 

The Demerits of Solar Energy Audit.

There are no disadvantages of carrying out this process however, if it is not carried out by a professional Solar Technician the system design can either be overestimated or underestimated which can lead to a more expensive capital cost or a system malfunction.

At Auxano Solar, our team of excellent professional Solar Technicians and Engineers dot all the i’s and cross all the T’s during every energy audit of any project capacity.

We are AUXANO SOLAR and ALL OUR INNOVATIONS WORKS.

Think Solar, Think Auxano Solar!