Hotel Room Energy Management
Key-card enabled systems should be "business as usual" in the U.S.
Key-card systems can save 25 to 45% of the energy used by hotel rooms.
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No one ever takes a rental car to be washed. Likewise, most people don't think about energy consumption when staying in a hotel. Too many blast the air conditioner or turn up the heat even when they leave the room empty.
Key-card energy management is a simple and effective way to conserve energy. These systems, widely deployed in Europe and Asia, link the heating, cooling and lighting in a room to an illuminated key-card slot near the entrance.
When a guest leaves the room, taking the key card, the electricity is turned off and the thermostat resets to a temperature pre-selected by the hotel's owner. When the guest returns and inserts the key in the slot, power returns to all equipment in the room—lighting, heating, cooling, TV and radio.
Energy savings can reach 45%
DBS Lodging Technologies, a small company based in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, is a leading vendor of key-card energy management systems in the U.S. Its Entergize system has been installed in between 12,000 and 15,000 rooms across the country, from expensive brands like Westin and Wyndham to mom-and-pop hotels.
According to DBS Lodging, the Entergize systems can save 25 to 45% of the energy used by each room. (This doesn't including energy consumed by the hotel kitchen, laundry and public rooms, of course.) Payback for the upfront costs of installing the system is just 16 to 22 months, according to David Donaldson, vice president of DBS Lodging. Another company, RoomEnergy, offers a similar service.
The biggest reasons hotel owners give for not buying a system is that they worry some guests may not want to wait for their rooms to cool down or heat up after they have been out all day.
Yet according to Thomas Martini, the general manager of the Westin Convention Center Hotel in Pittsburgh, "The system works quite well, as long as we do the guest education up front."
This Pittsburgh Westin installed a system back in 2004 and recently upgraded to a more sophisticated one. The 616-room hotel achieved payback on its initial $120,000 investment in less than one year.
Additionally, key-card systems offer an appealing co-benefit for hotel staff: They prevent guests from locking themselves out of their rooms.
Posted: 06-Apr-2009; Updated: 20-Apr-2009
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