Commercial Recommendations
HOTELS AND MOTELS
Energy Use
Energy use in hotels and motels is strongly affected by occupancy. 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%.
Measures that are frequently found to be cost-effective include the
following:
Hot Water
- Inspect for water leaks and repair them. Ignoring such simple maintenance
measures is costly since leaks tend to get worse with time and more expensive
to fix.
- Install high-quality, low-flow shower heads. Models whose spray patterns
may be adjusted by users are best for they communicate to guests that
management cares about both comfort and energy and water conservation.
Paybacks on the order of weeks are not uncommon.
- Lower hot water system temperature to 120-130 degrees.
- Insulate hot water lines wherever accessible.
- Specify high-efficiency, gas-fired water heating equipment. Small,
mid-efficiency, atmospherically-vented water heating systems with energy
factors of 0.62 to 0.70 are more cost-effective than standard, less-efficient
equipment. Direct vent, sealed-combustion, condensing boilers have even better
energy factors—up to 0.86. Commercial boilers that meet ENERGY STAR standards
are listed at
www.energystar.gov/ia/products/prod_lists/boilers_prod_list.pdf.
- Consider installing multiple boilers. These provide redundancy and can be
staged in a way that more efficiently meets loads, compared with a single
large machine.
- Use heat recovery from waste water to preheat hot water.
HVAC
- Install occupancy controls for lighting and HVAC in guest rooms.
- Consider heat-pump water heaters for indoor swimming pools to
simultaneously heat water and provide dehumidification.
- Institute demand ventilation controlled by air quality sensors in public
spaces from lobbies and dining rooms to parking garages.
- Downsize to a new high-efficiency chiller in conjunction with lighting
retrofits.
- Choose high-efficiency packaged A/C units listed by the Consortium for
Energy Efficiency in their Tier 2 guidelines (www.cee1.org/com/hecac/ac_tiers/impcttbl.htm).
- Use condensing boilers with large turn-down ratios whose efficiencies
improve with turn-down.
- Switch over to direct digital controls.
- Install premium-efficiency motors.
- Verify economizer function and control.
- Consider using cool air from the cooling tower with water-cooled chillers.
- Consider indirect-direct evaporative cooling.
- Upgrade the energy management system; optimize settings to reflect usage,
respond to changing weather patterns, and control peak electric loads.
The Consortium for Energy Efficiency designates
specifications for high-efficiency commercial packaged
air conditioning equipment and maintains a database of
qualifying products at
www.cee1.org.
| Utah Power has organized an HVAC Energy
Efficiency Alliance, whose members are vendors,
contractors, or distributors involved in promoting
energy-efficient heating, ventilation, and air
conditioning equipment. The link below will connect
you to Utah Power’s HVAC vendor list on the Utah
Power website. This vendor list is updated on a
regular basis.
|
Lighting
- Install compact fluorescent bulbs in place of incandescents in guest
rooms, halls, and elevators.
- Install energy-efficient lighting in all other spaces.
- Install and calibrate automatic lighting controls in conjunction with
skylights and clerestories in open areas in order to dim lights in response to
daylight.
- Install LED exit signs.
- Upgrade parking lot lighting to save energy and reduce environmental
impacts due to light spillage.
- Upgrade garage parking lighting.
Find a list of ENERGY STAR-qualified CFL bulbs at
www.energystar.gov/ia/products/prod_lists/cfl_prod_list.pdf.
A list of ENERGY STAR-qualified LED exit signs can be
found at
www.energystar.gov/ia/products/prod_lists/exit_signs_prod_list.pdf.
| Utah Power has organized a Lighting Energy
Efficiency Alliance, whose members are vendors,
contractors, or distributors involved in promoting
energy-efficient lighting. The link below will
connect you to Utah Power’s lighting vendor list on
the Utah Power website. This vendor list is updated
on a regular basis.
|
Building Envelope
- Shade windows and doors from direct sunlight to decrease cooling loads.
- Install high-efficiency glazing carefully chosen for sun exposure and
other variables on each facade.
- Install insulation in strategic locations.
- Undertake air sealing, including duct work.
- Install an ENERGY STAR rated cool roof.
Learn more on the
Building Envelope Energy Efficiency Measures page.
Plug Loads
- Choose energy-efficient ENERGY STAR appliances throughout the facility.
Mini refrigerators placed in guest rooms are notoriously energy wasteful, but
ENERGY STAR models are now available.
- Choose energy-efficient office equipment.
- Install Vending Misers on vending machines.
- Install ENERGY STAR commercial refrigerators and water coolers.
Details on office equipment that meet ENERGY STAR
criteria for energy efficiency are available at
www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=ofc_equip.pr_office_equipment.
Combined Heat and Power (CHP) System
- Investigate installing a combined heat and power
system. Hotels and motels are good applications for
CHP because in addition to supplying all of the site’s
electrical loads, a CHP system can supply all of the
site’s heat and hot water for laundries, showers, food
service, and space heating. When properly sized and
designed, such a system can save substantial money,
avoid the large thermal losses associated with
conventional power generation at utility plants, and
avoid the transmission and distribution losses
associated with delivering the power over power lines,
and avoid separate fuel usage for heating.
- Incorporate an absorption chiller into the design.
An absorption chiller can run off the waste heat from
a CHP system, drastically cutting down on peak-time
electricity used for cooling loads.
Learn more about CHP on the
CHP Energy
Efficiency Measures page, or by visiting the website
of the
Intermountain CHP Center. The Center works in the
areas of project support and facilitation, education and
outreach, market assessment, policy review, and
coalition building. Visit the
Intermountain CHP Buyer’s Guide website to access
information about vendors, contractors, and distributors
who can turn your project idea into reality.
Benchmarking
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and
Department of Energy through the ENERGY STAR® Program
have developed an energy performance benchmarking
tool. The tool enables building owners to evaluate
the energy performance of their buildings on a scale of
1-100 relative to similar buildings nationwide. The
rating system accounts for the impacts of year-to-year
weather variations, as well as building size, location,
and several operating characteristics. Buildings rating
75 or greater qualify for the ENERGY STAR label.
Eligible space types, representing over 50% of U.S.
commercial floor space, include:
- Offices (general offices, financial centers, bank
branches, and courthouses)
- K-12 Schools
- Hospitals (acute care and children's)
- Hotels and Motels
- Medical Offices
- Supermarkets
- Residence Halls
- Warehouses (refrigerated and non-refrigerated)
For further information or to download the
performance benchmarking tool, see
www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=evaluate_performance.bus_announcing.
Assistance
Utah Power has a host of programs targeted to
meeting its customer’s energy efficiency needs. Visit
the
Utah Power profile page by
clicking here. |
