Thursday, March 18, 2010

Company produces energy audit software


One of the chief components of the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant application through the state was the energy audit. Cities and counties were required to find energy efficiency opportunities to spend the Stimulus money. This meant targeting outdated lighting, air conditioning and electrical motors in pumps, among other things.

Engineers went building to building in most of the 33 cities and three counties in the San Joaquin Valley Clean Energy Partnership and took stock of lighting wattage, AC tonnage and pump horsepower. Then they calculated the savings retrofits would provide.

Cambridge, Mass.-based kWhOURS Inc. hopes to simplify that process with energy audit software it is due to release in the next several days.

"We firmly believe that a skilled energy auditor should focus on the engineering challenges that require his/her expertise, rather than attending to time-sinking and repetitive data migration and calculation tasks," the company said on its Web site.

kWhOURS describes the product as an easy-to-navigate program that "organizes your work as you go, making it simpler to collect and analyze data." The company said the software offers guidance throughout the auditing process and allows the user to improvise.

"kWhOURS' potential customers are interested in its technology because of the lengthy, expensive and archaic process through which most energy audits are currently conducted," wrote Yoni Cohen of Greentechmedia.com. Cohen said a number of companies, most notably San Francisco-based Recurve, which focuses on residential audits, are developing similar products.

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