This is the first step of any energy saving project, and crucial to identify energy consumption hotspots and inefficiencies in the building. This will help to understand how much energy your business uses, bad actors in your process and actions that need to take to save energy, and their estimated cost and impact.
Regulatory requirements
Why do you need an Energy Audit?
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It is important to understand the financial supports and grants available for SMEs and other businesses in different settings before performing the cost benefit analysis for a project.
Finance Decision Making Tool (FDMT)
This tool makes it easier for you to see what non repayable and other finance options available to you depending on the business sector, retrofit measures, annual energy consumption and size of the project. These inputs will decide what grants available to you and key information like grant amount, timeline and direct link to the specific grant will be showed to you.
Refer to our SME guide to financing energy efficiency projects [1]handbook to explore more information on possible grants, tax reliefs, loan finance, asset finance, etc. This guide will help you to understand pros and cons in different types of finance options which will help you to decide which options are most suitable for your business approach.
Simplified flowchart for FDMT
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[1] This handbook needs to be in both view and downloadable version
It’s always better to select SEAI registered contractor to implement your energy efficient retrofit project to ensure quality and compliance with Irish standards which lead to secure the grants available.
When selecting a contractor, it is important to consider the following key factors.
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When developing a retrofit plan, the initial energy audit is important, and the retrofit work needs to be aligned with the initial anergy audit recommendations which will allow business to save energy through the improvement. Business owner can request the help from the contractor, and both can discuss and finalise the retrofit plan. When developing the retrofit plan its always better to adhere to the requirement with the EPBD energy efficiency targets and specially minimum Energy Performance Standards (MEPS) for non-residential buildings.
Risk assessment also an important thing you need to have in this stage. Deciding how much risk is involved in the project, which determines how it will be managed moving forward. Proper retrofit plan leads you to reduce the lead time and interruption to your business.
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This step consists of installing and carry out the planned measures, testing and handover to the business. Make sure following key actions are performed during project implementation phase,
Once you complete the retrofit measures you can update your BER rating by doing a BER assessment from a qualified BER assessor.
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Monitoring your system and maintain in a proper way is very important at the end of a retrofit project. Make sure your installed systems running smoothly and monitor them frequently to understand any faults in the system. It is essential to discuss with your contractor to look into the preventive maintenance schedule for your M&E systems installed.
Refer to the following guides to get an idea about how you can maintain and monitor your installed M&E systems.
Heat pump operation and maintenance guide.
O&M guide for mechanical ventilator heat recovery (MVHR) unit
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Retrofitting FAQs
