A serious commercial energy audit is not a sales pitch with a clipboard. It is a structured walk-through that produces an actionable list of items, ranked by payback period, with the LEC's name on each line. We do these for retail tenants, light industrial, restaurants, multi-residential, and small office portfolios across Hamilton, Burlington, Stoney Creek, Waterdown, and Oakville. Year-end is the right time — utility bills from the year are in, capital budgets for next year are being set, and the audit findings either land in the new budget or wait another twelve months. Here is what we actually look for, and where the savings are.
The audit principle: payback, not features
Every item in the audit gets sorted by payback period in months. Anything under 12 months pays for itself inside the fiscal year. Anything under 24 months is an easy yes. Anything over 36 months goes on a "consider when the existing equipment fails" list rather than a "do now" list. The exception is anything safety-critical, which goes to the top regardless of payback.
The way we lose business in this market is by recommending big-ticket capital projects with 5+ year paybacks. The way we keep customers is by recommending the 6-month-payback items first.
The four buckets where the savings live
1. Lighting: almost always the biggest single bucket
For most Golden Horseshoe small-commercial sites, lighting is 25–40% of the electric bill. LED retrofit is the single most common high-ROI item:
- T8 / T12 fluorescent tube replacement to LED. Two paths: tombstone-rewire to direct-wire LED tubes (no ballast, simpler, longer fixture life) or plug-and-play LED tubes (work with existing ballast until ballast fails). Payback for a typical small office: 12–18 months. Big driver: ballast replacement costs eliminated.
- HID high-bay to LED high-bay in warehouses. Metal halide 400W high-bays draw 458W with ballast losses. LED equivalent drives 150W and produces more light. Payback for a 20-fixture warehouse: under 24 months, often under 18 with utility rebates.
- HPS exterior to LED exterior. Parking lot and building exterior — see the parking lot lighting post for the full math.
- Recessed cans to LED retrofit kits. Retail and office. Cheap, fast, instant savings, no ceiling work needed.
2. Controls: the cheapest second pass after LED
Once the fixtures are LED, controls extract the next layer of savings without changing any hardware. The high-ROI control upgrades:
- Occupancy sensors in private offices, conference rooms, washrooms, storage areas. A washroom with the lights on 16 hours a day going to 2 hours of actual occupancy is a 90% savings on that fixture. Wall-switch occupancy sensors (Leviton ODSOC, Lutron Maestro) install in under 30 minutes per location.
- Daylight harvesting in offices and retail with windows. Photocell-dimmed perimeter row of fixtures responds to natural light. Save 30–40% on the perimeter row alone.
- Astronomical timers replacing manual time-clocks. A 1990s mechanical time-clock that needs to be reset twice a year for daylight saving is also drifting and running lights 30–60 minutes longer than needed every day. The replacement is $80 of hardware and 45 minutes of labour.
- Lighting contactor schedule audit. Many commercial sites have a single contactor switching half the lights, on a schedule nobody has reviewed since the original install. We pull the schedule, ask the tenant when they actually need the lights, and reprogram. No hardware change, real savings.
3. Panel and distribution: torque, balance, and continuity
This is the bucket nobody else audits, and it is where we find the things that justify the call:
- Panel torque audit. Every breaker landing in the panel torqued to manufacturer spec. Loose connections cause heat, which causes resistance, which causes more heat — a thermal runaway that ends in melted insulation, scorched buswork, or a fire. We use a calibrated torque driver, document each landing, and any landing that comes loose under the spec torque is a finding. Common on aluminum branch landings.
- Thermographic scan with calibrated IR camera. Under load, every connection should be the same temperature as the bus around it. Hot spots show up immediately. A pole-mounted main breaker terminal running 25°C hotter than the bus next to it is a finding. We document with images.
- Phase balance. For three-phase services, the loads across the three phases should be within 10–15% of each other. Severely unbalanced phases waste energy in the neutral, increase utility demand charges, and reduce equipment life. Re-balancing is sometimes just moving branch breakers between phases.
- Power factor. Heavy inductive loads (motors, transformers) draw reactive power that costs the utility to deliver. Power factor correction with capacitor banks at the service is justifiable on industrial sites with low PF. Not justifiable on most light commercial. We will tell you which you are.
- Demand-side load shedding. Larger commercial sites pay demand charges based on peak 15-minute or 30-minute interval draw. Identifying the peaks and shifting flexible loads (water heaters, HVAC pre-cool/pre-heat, EV charging) out of the peak windows reduces the demand charge without reducing any actual usage.
4. HVAC electrical scope
We do not do HVAC mechanical, but we do audit the electrical side and identify items that the HVAC contractor can address:
- VFDs (variable-frequency drives) on motors that run continuously at one speed — fans, pumps. Adding a VFD lets the motor run at the speed actually needed, often cutting energy use by 30–50% on partial-load operation.
- Motor condition — older 1970s NEMA-A motors are far less efficient than modern NEMA Premium motors. End-of-life replacement is a moment to upgrade.
- Heat-pump retrofit feasibility — see our shoulder-season heat pump post. The commercial version of that conversation is bigger and has more capital cost, but the operating cost story is real.
What we deliver
A typical audit takes 3–6 hours on site for a 5,000–15,000 sq ft commercial space, more for industrial or multi-building portfolios. The deliverable:
- Site walk report documenting every panel, lighting zone, motor, HVAC unit, and controls system
- Thermographic images of every panel and major distribution point, with hot spots flagged
- Torque audit results for every panel
- Phase balance and power factor readings for the main service
- Retrofit and control opportunity list sorted by payback period, with cost and savings estimates for each
- Safety findings separated from energy findings
- Implementation phasing recommendation — what to do in the next 30 days, the next 90 days, the next year, and the items to defer to equipment end-of-life
What you do with the report
The straightforward path: ask us to quote the items on the implementation list. We carry the audit findings into a proposal that prices each item separately, so you can pick the ones that fit this fiscal year's budget. Multi-site portfolios get a phased plan that spreads work across sites and quarters.
If you have an in-house facilities team and you want to handle the work yourselves, the report is yours to use. The deliverable is the value, not the implementation lock-in.
Rebates and utility programs
The Save On Energy program (administered by the IESO and delivered through your local LDC: Alectra, Burlington Hydro, Oakville Hydro, and others) offers commercial rebates on LED retrofits, controls, and high-efficiency motors. The programs change every fiscal year, so we track what is currently available at audit time and include rebate-adjusted payback in the report. We do not bake rebate assumptions into the underlying business case, because the programs come and go, but we will flag where they apply.
Why year-end is the right timing
- The year's utility bills are complete — accurate consumption baseline
- Capital budgets for the new year are being finalized in December and January
- Most commercial sites are quieter between Christmas and mid-January — easier site access
- The first quarter of the new year has open contractor schedules, easier ESA permit timing, and faster implementation
When to call us
If you run or manage a commercial property in Hamilton, Burlington, Stoney Creek, Waterdown, Ancaster, Dundas, or Oakville, year-end is the window to book the audit and have findings in hand for Q1 capital decisions. We do commercial electrical, commercial lighting, and industrial controls work across the Golden Horseshoe. Request an energy audit quote with your site size and we will schedule the walk.