Smart Hotels: Tips to Generate Energy Savings

Over the past decade, Octus Energy and our energy efficiency development arm, Quantum Energy, have developed energy-savings projects for more than 100 hotel properties. Why are hotels prime candidates for energy conservation? Energy Efficiency Guide for Colorado Businesses paints the picture:

Guests affect heating and cooling loads in their rooms, consume hot water, and increase energy use in dining facilities. Hotels and motels tend to have quite high hot water heating loads - about 33% of the total - because of showers, laundries, and food service. HVAC loads constitute another 30%, lighting 20%, and plug loads 17%.

Here's a recap of a recently-completed Quantum project, this one for a 361-room national chain hotel for whom we secured generous utility company rebates and designed and implemented two energy-savings solutions:

• An energy-efficient laundry system that reduced water heating costs by 70% and water costs by 30%, generating annual savings of $28,000 with a nine-month payback.
• Retrofit of inefficient incandescent lighting with LED lighting systems that reduced energy use by 85% and extended individual lamp life by 40,000 hours, generating annual savings of $49,000, a one-year payback, and significant reduction in lighting maintenance.

Total payback: Less than one year, with savings cash-flowing thereafter.

Of course, there are myriad moving parts in a hotel, and thus multiple opportunities to generate savings. Colorado's energy efficiency guide amplifies more than two-dozen ways hotels can cut energy use. Read on and reap the savings.