Top 12 Energy Auditor Skills to Put on Your Resume
In today’s hiring climate, energy auditors rise to the top when their resumes blend technical rigor, sharp analysis, and a real grip on sustainability. Show the skills that prove you can uncover waste, trim loads, and turn buildings lean.
Energy Auditor Skills
- AutoCAD
- RETScreen
- Thermography
- HVAC Analysis
- EnergyPlus
- EQUEST
- Excel
- LEED Guidelines
- BPI Standards
- ASHRAE Procedures
- Energy Modeling
- Solar PV Analysis
1. AutoCAD
AutoCAD is computer-aided design software used to draft precise 2D/3D drawings. Energy auditors rely on it to read, mark up, and coordinate building layouts that inform load analysis, retrofits, and efficiency improvements.
Why It's Important
Accurate drawings make or break an audit. AutoCAD helps you trace systems, quantify areas and volumes, and coordinate changes with engineers and contractors without guesswork.
How to Improve AutoCAD Skills
Make AutoCAD work for energy audits, not the other way around.
Add energy context: Use layers, block attributes, and fields to tag envelope components, lighting zones, and HVAC equipment so quantities and takeoffs are instant.
Customize your workspace: Build palettes and command macros for common audit tasks—area polylines, hatch standards for assemblies, standardized callouts, automated schedules.
Exploit data extraction: Pull block data and geometry into tables for doors, windows, fixtures, and equipment; export to spreadsheets for rapid calculations.
Bridge to BIM: Export clean geometry or use Revit/Insight workflows for simulation. Draft in AutoCAD, simulate and iterate in BIM tools, cycle back with changes.
Collaborate in the cloud: Use shared models and version control so field notes, redlines, and updates don’t clash.
Streamlined templates and repeatable standards slash time and lift accuracy across audits.
How to Display AutoCAD Skills on Your Resume
2. RETScreen
RETScreen is a clean-energy management platform for screening, feasibility, performance analysis, and financial evaluation of energy efficiency and renewable projects.
Why It's Important
It helps you move from “looks promising” to quantified savings, emissions impacts, and payback—fast and defensibly.
How to Improve RETScreen Skills
Nail the fundamentals: Work through sample projects end-to-end until your inputs and assumptions are second nature.
Stay current: Keep your software and databases up to date so device efficiencies, fuels, and weather sets reflect reality.
Train with purpose: Use official tutorials, case studies, and webinars; then replicate them with your own data.
Engage peers: Compare approaches with other auditors to calibrate assumptions and avoid blind spots.
Work with real data: Back-cast on completed projects to test model fidelity and refine your default inputs.
Strengthen analytics: Hone your statistics and financial modeling so sensitivity, risk, and cash flows are rock solid.
How to Display RETScreen Skills on Your Resume
3. Thermography
Thermography uses infrared imaging to visualize surface temperatures so you can spot heat loss, air leakage, moisture intrusion, and insulation defects that the naked eye misses.
Why It's Important
It’s non-invasive, quick, and revealing. Envelopes tell on themselves when you see the heat patterns.
How to Improve Thermography Skills
Use the right camera: Choose sufficient resolution, thermal sensitivity, and lens for building diagnostics—not just gadgetry.
Get trained and certified: Formal instruction improves emissivity settings, reflections management, and interpretation under tricky conditions.
Maintain and calibrate: Regular checks keep readings trustworthy.
Time it right: Aim for adequate temperature differentials, low wind, and stable weather. Stack the deck for clear contrasts.
Analyze with software: Use reporting tools to annotate, trend, and quantify temperature deltas for defensible findings.
Pair with pressure: Combine with blower door testing to pinpoint leaks, not just hint at them.
How to Display Thermography Skills on Your Resume
4. HVAC Analysis
HVAC analysis examines how heating, cooling, and ventilation systems perform, where they waste energy, and how to tune or retrofit them for better comfort at lower cost.
Why It's Important
HVAC is often the biggest load. Find the inefficiencies there, and savings snowball.
How to Improve HVAC Analysis Skills
Benchmark first: Compare usage and demand against similar buildings and targets to set a baseline.
Instrument and monitor: Pull interval data with BMS/IoT sensors for temperatures, flows, runtimes, and faults. Patterns reveal waste.
Test performance: Commission fans, pumps, economizers, and ducts. Verify airflow, balancing, and leakage.
Optimize controls: Deploy demand-controlled ventilation, reset strategies, lockouts, and variable speed where it counts.
Maintain and retro-commission: Restore sequences, fix failed actuators, clean coils, and re-verify. Old gear can behave like new when tuned.
Engage occupants: Align setpoints and schedules with real use. Small behavior tweaks, big dividends.
Add renewables when viable: Consider heat recovery, geothermal, or solar-assisted heating to trim conventional loads.
Model smartly: Use simulation tools to test scenarios before spending a dime.
How to Display HVAC Analysis Skills on Your Resume
5. EnergyPlus
EnergyPlus is a detailed whole-building energy simulation engine covering loads, systems, controls, lighting, and more.
Why It's Important
It lets you test measures virtually—then prioritize what actually saves energy and money under real weather and tariffs.
How to Improve EnergyPlus Skills
Keep versions current: New releases improve algorithms, speed, and features. Don’t lag.
Start from examples: Use vetted example files and templates to build solid models faster.
Model geometry cleanly: Build with tools like OpenStudio or SketchUp workflows to reduce geometry errors and rework.
Run parametrics: Use OpenStudio’s Parametric Analysis Tool (PAT) to probe sensitivities and rank measures.
Use local weather: Choose weather files that reflect the actual site, not a rough stand-in.
Get tariffs right: Configure rates, demand charges, and time-of-use blocks correctly so economics are credible.
Speed up: Simplify models thoughtfully, and batch simulations on capable hardware or the cloud.
Learn continuously: Follow community discussions, changelogs, and workshops to refine technique.
Seek training: Formal instruction pays off quickly on complex system modeling and controls.
How to Display EnergyPlus Skills on Your Resume
6. EQUEST
EQUEST is a DOE-2–based building energy modeling tool that helps simulate use and compare conservation measures with costs and savings.
Why It's Important
It’s approachable yet powerful, useful for compliance pathways and quick what-ifs on existing buildings.
How to Improve EQUEST Skills
Build depth one step at a time.
1. Master the basics: Understand the wizard workflows, then graduate to detailed mode for fine control.
2. Train deliberately: Work through tutorials and sample projects that mirror the buildings you audit.
3. Learn from peers: Participate in practitioner communities to troubleshoot models and compare assumptions.
4. Practice on real scenarios: Recreate past audits and verify the model against bills and interval data.
5. Track updates: Note releases, weather files, and libraries that affect outcomes.
6. Use advanced features: Dive into custom reports, detailed HVAC, and schedules to uncover savings you’d otherwise miss.
7. Keep learning: Pair modeling education with broader HVAC/controls knowledge to sharpen judgment.
How to Display EQUEST Skills on Your Resume
7. Excel
Excel is the everyday workhorse for organizing audit data, crunching numbers, trending performance, and building clear reports.
Why It's Important
From utility normalization to measure analysis and M&V, Excel turns raw data into decisions.
How to Improve Excel Skills
Advance your formulas: Get fluent with
INDEX(MATCH()),XLOOKUP(),SUMIFS(),COUNTIFS(), arrays, and dynamic ranges.Pivots and charts: Summarize, slice, and visualize usage, load shapes, and savings with PivotTables and PivotCharts.
Dashboards: Combine conditional formatting, sparklines, and thoughtful layouts for crisp storytelling.
Automate: Record macros, then write VBA to clean data, build reports, and standardize M&V routines.
Power tools: Use Power Query for ETL and Power Pivot for large models and DAX calculations.
Shortcuts: Keyboard efficiency compounds. Learn them.
How to Display Excel Skills on Your Resume
8. LEED Guidelines
LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) provides rating systems and credits for designing, operating, and maintaining greener buildings.
Why It's Important
For auditors, LEED offers a structured lens to prioritize measures that hit performance, health, and environmental goals—not just kilowatt-hours.
How to Improve LEED Guidelines Skills
Use benchmarking: Set data-driven energy targets that align with LEED’s performance pathways.
Track updates: Follow revisions (such as LEED v4.1 requirements) to keep credits and documentation current.
Verify performance: Recommend periodic audits and ongoing commissioning to sustain credit compliance and savings.
Apply life-cycle thinking: Use LCA to weigh material and system impacts beyond first cost.
Engage occupants: Pair technical fixes with behavior strategies for durable outcomes.
Design for future tech: Plan for electrification, storage, and intelligent controls so buildings evolve gracefully.
How to Display LEED Guidelines Skills on Your Resume
9. BPI Standards
BPI Standards set methods and safety protocols for home performance and energy audits, ensuring consistent, high-quality assessments and upgrades.
Why It's Important
They anchor your work in health, safety, and accuracy—combustion safety, airflow, insulation, and air sealing, all done right.
How to Improve BPI Standards Skills
Stay current: Refresh certifications and review updates so field practice matches the latest standards.
Use modern diagnostics: Blower doors, duct testers, thermal cameras, combustion analyzers—measure, don’t assume.
Invest in CEU-rich training: Keep sharpening building science fundamentals and practical field techniques.
Enforce QA/QC: Build checklists, peer reviews, and file audits into your workflow.
Close the loop: Collect client feedback and post-upgrade performance to improve recommendations.
Network and contribute: Engage with practitioner groups and share lessons learned; help shape future standards.
How to Display BPI Standards Skills on Your Resume
10. ASHRAE Procedures
ASHRAE procedures and standards outline how to assess, model, commission, and verify building systems for energy performance and comfort.
Why It's Important
They give you a common language and tested methods so audits are consistent, credible, and actionable.
How to Improve ASHRAE Procedures Skills
Review updates routinely: Incorporate the latest standards and guidelines into your templates and methods.
Adopt the right tools: Use recommended simulation and M&V approaches that align with ASHRAE guidance.
Enhance data capture: Deploy smart meters and sensors, and follow rigorous savings measurement practices.
Broaden scope: Consider indoor air quality, thermal comfort, and resilience alongside pure efficiency.
Train and certify: Take instructor-led courses and pursue credentials to deepen technical proficiency.
Share and learn: Participate in technical committees, chapters, and workshops to exchange best practices.
How to Display ASHRAE Procedures Skills on Your Resume
11. Energy Modeling
Energy modeling simulates building performance using inputs for envelope, systems, controls, occupancy, and weather to predict usage and test improvements.
Why It's Important
It turns hunches into ranked, costed measures—before you touch the building.
How to Improve Energy Modeling Skills
Elevate data quality: Gather granular, clean inputs—schedules, plug loads, infiltration, weather, tariffs.
Use multiple tools: Be comfortable with more than one platform so you pick the right tool for the job.
Calibrate: Align models with utility bills and interval data; iterate until error bands are tight.
Keep learning: Take courses, study case studies, and practice complex systems (heat recovery, DOAS, advanced controls).
Integrate early: Collaborate with architects and engineers at concept phase to bake in efficiency, not bolt it on later.
Benchmark: Compare against peers and targets to validate realism and uncover gaps.
Explore innovation: Test electrification, storage, renewables, and demand flexibility within the model.
How to Display Energy Modeling Skills on Your Resume
12. Solar PV Analysis
Solar PV analysis evaluates site solar resource, array layout, shading, expected output, system losses, and economics to size systems and forecast returns.
Why It's Important
It ensures the design is technically sound, financially sensible, and aligned with broader energy goals.
How to Improve Solar PV Analysis Skills
Assess the site thoroughly: Use mapping tools and shading analysis to quantify irradiance and obstacles.
Model with precision: Work in tools like PVWatts, SAM, or HelioScope to capture module, inverter, temperature, and wiring effects.
Use quality weather data: Prefer high-resolution, location-specific datasets to reduce estimate drift.
Refine the financials: Incorporate incentives, degradation, O&M, demand charges, and time-of-use rates into cash flows.
Keep learning: Track module efficiency trends, bifacial gains, racking options, and inverter features.
Plan monitoring: Specify performance monitoring to verify yield and inform O&M decisions post-install.
How to Display Solar PV Analysis Skills on Your Resume
