Hotels and Resorts
A hotel's electricity rises and falls with occupancy and the weather. Read the raw bill and a busy month looks like waste, a quiet one like success. Read it per occupied room-night and you can see where the difference really comes from.
Occupancy
Raw kWh misleads in a hotel
A full August uses far more electricity than a quiet February. That is not a finding. The number of guests changed, and so did the weather. Putting monthly bills side by side blames the busiest month every time.
The panel holds consumption alongside occupied room-nights. Occupancy is entered daily or monthly, or imported from a file, and consumption is divided by it. Two months with different occupancy are then judged on the same scale.
- kWh per occupied room-night, by day and by month
- Baseline built on occupancy and degree days together
- Start and end of season compared with the same model
The baseline is set from a reference period and then frozen. Each later month gets an expected figure from its occupancy and weather, and the gap between expected and actual comes from operation. A CUSUM curve adds that gap up over the season and shows whether an improvement has lasted.
Consumption and Occupancy
monthly · 12 monthsDepartments
Which department uses what?
The bill is a single line, but the consumption comes from dozens of places. Kitchens, the laundry, pool and spa plant, conference rooms, public areas and guest floors all disappear behind the same main meter.
Once those lines are metered separately, each department’s share appears in kWh and in pounds. In many hotels the kitchen and the laundry turn out larger than expected, and public-area load running through the night was never counted at all.
- Kitchen, laundry, pool and spa on their own lines
- Guest floors and blocks read from their distribution boards
- The unmetered remainder shown as unallocated consumption
Department breakdown changes the conversation. “The hotel uses too much” becomes “the spa air handling runs at full speed after closing”, which has an owner and can be fixed.
Consumption Breakdown
main meter → line → department · monthComfort and plant
Guest comfort first, then efficiency
In much of the UK the heating season matters more than cooling. Larger hotels still run chillers all year for conference suites, kitchens and summer peaks, and that plant is rarely measured until a room fails to cool.
The cooling module compares each chiller’s COP with the band expected for that wet-bulb temperature. With tower approach and pump power added, a loss can be placed on the machine, the tower or the pumps. On the heating side, the boiler house module tracks boiler efficiency and operating hours.
- COP machine by machine, against a weather-corrected band
- Tower approach and condenser temperatures
- Pumps and tower fans metered separately
A chiller that drops below its band raises an alarm and is linked to the maintenance record. COP before and after the work sits on the same screen, so the effect of a service is measured rather than assumed. The comfort set point never moves; the aim is to deliver it for less.
Cooling Plant
today · 15:00 · against expected band- Chiller 1 · load 72% 4.6COP inside the band
- Chiller 2 · load 58% 3.6COP below the band · tower side
- System · pumps and tower included 3.8COP at the limit
Night and red band
What runs when no guest needs it?
A hotel never closes, but not every space is busy every hour. Air conditioning left on in empty rooms, lobby and conference air handling running at full speed overnight, and garden lighting burning until morning all reach the bill without adding anything for the guest.
The time of day matters as well. On a half-hourly metered site, DUoS charges are highest in the red band, and the hours vary by distribution network. Flexible loads such as an on-site laundry can often move out of that window without any guest noticing.
- Night base load calculated separately and alarmed above a threshold
- Laundry and other flexible loads scheduled outside the red band
- Façade, garden and pool lighting on an astronomical timer
The remote control module ties external lighting to sunset, so the time shifts with the seasons on its own. Conference rooms and public-area air handling follow their own schedules, and an event day is entered as an exception. The DUoS red band guide explains how the bands work.
External and Public-Area Schedule
August · point by point- Façade
- Garden
- Pool lighting
- Laundry window set around the red band
- Conference extended on event days
- Lobby AHU not stepping back at night
schedule astronomical timer · 54 h open per week
Assistant
Last August in one question
At the end of the season management asks the same question: why did we spend more per room this year? The answer usually means reading several reports side by side, and it arrives weeks after the season has closed.
The AI assistant, Enver, takes that question in plain language. It separates occupancy and weather first, assigns the remainder to departments and plant, and lists the data it relied on under the answer.
- Occupancy and weather effects separated first
- The remainder assigned to departments and machines
- Every answer comes with its sources
Across a group the same logic runs between hotels. Each property is compared on kWh per occupied room-night, corrected for climate through degree days. The one that drifts goes on the list, and a large hotel is not blamed simply for being large.
Assistant
from the measurement record-
Why did energy per room-night rise compared with last August?
- Enver
This August used 40.3 kWh per occupied room-night against 37.3 kWh last August, a rise of about 8%. Occupancy was almost the same in both months (7,900 and 7,800 room-nights), and cooling degree days were 12% higher. The warmer weather explains roughly a third of the rise. Most of the rest is cooling: at the same wet-bulb temperature Chiller 2 ran at COP 4.4 last year and 3.6 this month, with tower approach up to 6 K. The second item is night load: the lobby air handling unit did not step back between 01:00 and 06:00. The first is a maintenance job, the second a schedule fix.
- half-hourly consumption · two Augusts
- occupancy data
- degree days · hourly weather
- chiller COP record
Which modules work in a hotel
| Module | What it does here |
|---|---|
| Energy Consumption | Half-hourly trend; kitchen, laundry, pool, spa, conference and floor breakdown |
| Chillers and Cooling | COP machine by machine, tower approach, pumps, alarms and maintenance |
| Energy Performance and ISO 50001 | Baseline on occupancy and degree days, CUSUM |
| Bill Validation | Half-hourly bill checked line by line against the measurement record |
| AI Assistant | Sourced answers to “why did energy per room-night rise” |
| Power Quality | Power factor, harmonics and voltage events |
| Remote Control | Astronomical timer for façade, garden and pool lighting; area schedules |
| Standby Power | Generator and UPS readiness, test records and the moment of an outage |
The chief engineer’s screen
In a hotel an outage is not a technical fault, it is a guest complaint. Generator fuel level, battery voltage and the result of the last test are held on the panel, and when the grid fails the transfer is recorded to the minute. The readiness question is answered before an outage, not during one. Voltage events from lifts and kitchen equipment sit on the same screen. Power factor is tracked too; reactive charges on half-hourly sites below 0.95 are usually small, but they are visible before the bill.
The alarm centre is role based. A cooling alarm goes to the chief engineer, a night base load warning to the duty manager, an outage notice to the general manager, by email and WhatsApp. Maintenance keeps plan and done side by side, so whether chiller, pump and generator servicing happened on time is read from one list. The bill itself is checked against agreed supply capacity, excess capacity charges and the Climate Change Levy line; the half-hourly bill guide walks through it.
For pricing by site and module, see the pricing page. Hotels sit within commercial buildings; shopping centres and offices have their own pages.
Frequently asked
How does occupancy data reach the panel?
Occupancy is entered daily or monthly, or imported from a file. The kWh per occupied room-night indicator and the baseline are calculated from it. The more often it is entered, the finer the comparison.
How are the start and end of the season compared?
The baseline is built with occupancy and degree days as variables and then frozen. Each month gets its expected consumption from the same model, and the gap that builds up over the season shows on the CUSUM curve. A quiet March and a full August are judged on the same scale.
Which points need separate metering?
The main meter, the cooling plant (chillers, towers and pumps), kitchen, laundry, pool and spa lines and the floor distribution boards are the most common. Existing meters on the boards are read where they are present; missing points are added.
Does this help with ESOS?
The ESOS Phase 4 qualification date is 31 December 2026: 250 or more employees, or turnover above £44m and a balance sheet above £38m. Notification is due by 5 December 2027 and the assessment must cover 95% of energy use. Half-hourly data with a department breakdown is what an assessor works from, and ISO 50001 is the alternative route. The ESOS Phase 4 guide covers the data side; the same records support SECR reporting for large companies.
Can we compare the hotels in our group?
Yes. Each property is compared on kWh per occupied room-night, with climate differences corrected through degree days. A hotel above the threshold goes on the list, and the assistant can be asked directly which property drifted and why.
Let us measure what is happening on your site.
In a one-hour call we look at your existing setup and set out exactly which measurement points are needed and what you would be able to see.