Commercial Building Energy Audit Standard Now Available in Spanish

From eSociety, April 2019

Spanish-speaking engineers can now use ASHRAE’s commercial building energy audits standard in their native language.

The Ecuadorian Technical Association of Air Conditioning and Refrigeration (ATEAAR) has translated Standard 211-2018, Standard for Commercial Building Energy Audits, into Spanish.

One translator—Eduardo Donoso, P.E., Fellow/Life Member ASHRAE—said energy consumption in buildings is an important industry topic. But the commercial energy audit industry is largely unregulated, and products that are labeled energy audits vary greatly in scope, rigor and quality.

“This standard is intended to bring some order to the chaos by establishing minimum performance levels for energy audits,” said Donoso, who is a member of the Publications Committee and the Chapter Technology Transfer Chair for the ASHRAE Ecuador Chapter.

Standard 211 is intended to supply more descriptions and information within ASHRAE’s Procedures for Commercial Building Energy Audits, he said.

“Because of that importance, we will like to bring this ‘new information’ to the Iberoamerican engineers in their language,” Donoso said, adding that Spanish-speaking engineers now have guidance to perform energy audit in commercial buildings.

Donoso said commercial building energy audits are important to the industry, and now the translated standard can help Spanish-speaking engineers properly perform audits.

ASHRAE/ACCA Standard 211 establishes consistent practices for conducting and reporting energy audits for commercial buildings. The standard:

• defines the procedures required to perform Energy Audit Levels 1, 2, and 3;
• provides a common scope of work for these audit levels for use by building owners and others;  
• establishes consistent methodology and minimum rigor of analysis required; and
• establishes minimum reporting requirements for the results of energy audits.