FAQs - Hospitality Industry Energy Saving Projects

All buildings have electricity and gas meters at their building incomers. Installing energy metering for individual circuits and systems within a hotel building can help to track energy usage at a more granular level. This information can be used to identify potential areas for improvement and then track improvements once systems have been upgraded. Hotels provide several areas for energy usage improvement including heating, ventilation and air conditioning and lighting. Other systems could include lifts, motor-controlled vents, on-site launderettes and swimming pools.

Voltage optimisers can help to reduce energy usage in hotel type accommodation where the local mains power supply is above 250Vac. Known as voltage reduction devices, voltage optimisers are available for single and three phase applications and reduce the voltage supplied to their connected loads to drive up energy savings. A typical single phase voltage optimiser will reduce a 250Vac mains power supply to less than 230Vac and this is a level that most single phase loads will work on without disruption.

The efficiency of a typical restaurant is dependent on its IT network. There will often be back-office systems for reservations, personnel and supply chain management and accounting. Front-of-house systems will link to this over the network and include table-to-kitchen terminals and customer billing and receipts. The issue for most restaurants comes when there is a power outage, even when a short duration. Short power outages can lead to service interruption and potentially lower service quality. Protecting terminals, network servers and IT peripherals with small desktop or tower UPS can help prevent disruption from short duration power outages. Longer runtime UPS can also be installed and for larger facilities including hotels, especially in remote areas, standby power generators with day tanks (8 hours runtime).