Reducing energy costs in hotels – now a key success factor
If, like many hotels your per kWh price has gone from something like 12p to 32p – you will be hurting. You could find yourself paying £100,000 or more in extra energy costs per year!
At this stage hotel owners have one of two options: sit it out and hope prices come down. Or, be proactive in energy generation and saving.
The case study below illustrates the kind of measures the business can take and where Solar and Charge can help your business.
Things you need to decide on…
Investment in energy generation and use reduction schemes can have excellent returns. It is usually much in excess of the money borrowing cost. However the returns are spread over 10 to 25 years, but costs are usually front loaded… noney that you need to find or finance.
Investment
Like all other investments, you need be comfortable with the level of your outlay
Audit
Good place to start is an overall look at your energy ‘sources, uses and spend’
Proposal
Solar and Charge‘s proposal will aim to get the best returns for your money. You decide what’s in and out
Implement
We will install / implement the value engineered solution that is agreed
Ready to Save an 40% of your energy bill?
Hotel in Midlands
Over the last 10 years this hotel had managed to reduce energy consumption to nearly half. Bills fell by only a third in the face of steadily increasing energy costs and new levies. Directors had also decided to reduce CO2 footprint to industry leading levels in order to attract new business.
Profits were already battered by covid trading conditions. Now in autumn 2022, the business faced another threat. A tripling of gas and electricity per unit prices. The extra cost was the equivalent of several full time staff!
Credit to the hotel management for their strategic planning that concluded that :
- there was significant upside to having green credentials for the business
- EV charges would be a boost for new custom and an extra revenue source
- clearly lower energy cost would be a boon but so would more control of their budget
The team at Solar and Charge were briefed on these objectives – reduction of cost, a five year payback on spend and reduction of CO2 footprint.
The proposal
Solar and Charge outlined an extensive solution within the investment budget – with some serious value engineering and innovations solutions, plus hard bargaining with manufacturers. Proposal included:
- 79 kW of solar panels
- 120 kW battery storage
- 100 kW inverters
- new specific (gas) boilers
- new (type of) heaters in rooms
- EV charge points
- air source heat pump for water
What we did / how we worked
Information was collected pre-visit, on site and post-visit while researching appropriate solutions. What we found was:
- Fixed (reasonable) rates for energy supply were coming came to an end in Jan 2023. Expectation was that it would increase 3 to 5 fold!
- The hotel used c 350 MW electricity and 1MW per year.
- There were 75 bedroom and extensive conferencing facility and significant daytime occupancy.
- Room heaters were electric
- two of three gas boilers were troublesome
All the ‘easy things’ like LED lights and auto switches had been done. Even the swimming pool had been converted to a conference room!
In business terms the hotel team felt:
- there was significant upside to having green credentials in attracting new business
- EV charges would be a boost
- they wanted more control of their budget
This is amazing
The hotels energy consumption in 2013 was 8.8 MW – (gas and electric). In 10 years changes they had made had made that fall to 4.5 MW.
Now all that energy saving leverage was going to be wiped and some by the new reality of much higher cost per unit.
The Implementation
Directors chose to implement only some of the proposals and phase others to later. Breakeven on spend ranged from two years to 5 years.
Solar panels, a bank of batteries (beating the supply shortage), the recommended changes to gas boilers, in room heaters were done Nov to Jan 23. EV charge points install was in phase 2, started mid-Mar 23. Total spend c£175K
The Results
Directors chose to implement only some of the proposals and phase others to later. Breakeven ranged from two years to 5 years.
Jan 2023 gas usage was 10,838 kW lower! That is 2 tonnes of C02 saved!
Feb 23: the hotel electricity consumption was down by 9,500 kW. moreover there was a 50% increase in purchasing at the cheaper night rate! That is a further 1.85 tonnes of C02 saved!
The hotel’s objective of being close to net zero C02 is certainly close!