Energy Management for Hotels & Hospitality

What to measure

Guest room HVAC, domestic hot water, laundry, kitchen, pool and spa plant, and back-of-house together account for the overwhelming majority of a hotel's consumption. Metering them separately is what allows cost to be attributed to departments that can actually control it.

Water deserves equal attention. Laundry, kitchen, cooling tower makeup, irrigation and guest use behave differently, and a continuously running leak in any of them is invisible in a single site meter.

• Electric submetering for guest floors, laundry, kitchen, pool/spa and central plant
• Domestic hot water energy and, where feasible, recirculation losses
• Water submetering for laundry, kitchen, cooling tower and irrigation
• Guest room temperature and occupancy sensing where HVAC setback is being evaluated
• Occupancy data from the PMS to normalise consumption per occupied room

Which hardware fits

Guest-facing space rules out disruptive work. Wireless CT sensors on floor panels and back-of-house feeders can be installed without room access, and battery-powered wireless sensors avoid running cable through finished areas.

Water submeters with pulse or encoded outputs feed the same platform as the electric data, so a laundry that is using more water per room-night than last quarter is visible next to its energy trend rather than in a separate system.

• Wireless CT sensors and panel meters for floor and department circuits
• Pulse-output water meters for laundry, kitchen, tower makeup and irrigation
• BTU meters on chilled and hot water loops in central-plant properties
• LoRaWAN sensors for temperature, humidity and leak detection in back-of-house

How the data turns into savings

Three patterns recur. Laundry and kitchen equipment preheating hours before it is needed; pool and spa plant running at full schedule regardless of season or occupancy; and guest floor HVAC conditioning unsold rooms at occupied setpoints.

Each is a scheduling or control fix, and each is only actionable when the department's load can be seen on its own. Once cost per occupied room is tracked weekly, it also becomes a comparable operating metric across properties in a group — which is where brand-standard reporting and capital prioritisation start to work.