Solar Powered Energy Management for Hotels

 You know the scenario. You check into a hotel and anything goes. The air conditioner gets turned down to the coolest setting AND you open the windows because you want some fresh air. It’s not your house. Anything goes.

I was at a hotel in Italy recently and chose to leave my key card in the “activation slot” because I wanted my beagle to have AC and lights in the room while I was out. When I came back, the room was dark and hot. My beagle looked at me with annoyance and I realized the room had sensors that triggered the AC and the lights and his frame wasn’t enough to displace the air to tell the sensors to stay on. I think he’s recovered from that injustice.

Hotels consume massive amounts of energy and use 50% more energy than a similar sized residential building despite having only 55% occupancy rates on average.  Just for a comparison, hotels in Dubai on average use between 650 -1,250 liters of water per guest and consume 275 - 325 kWh of power per square meter. In Germany, the average hotel uses only 350 liters of water and 100 kWh per square meter. Europe has approximately 5.45 million hotel rooms, which represents almost half of the world total. You do the math.

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Most hotels are rapidly moving towards smart energy management solutions, but it’s expensive to retrofit old hotels and most won’t shut down for major renovations if they don’t really have to. Energy costs are the highest fixed cost for hotels after salaries. Major energy costs for hotels include heating, light and power (HLP).

Zenros, a start up in Denmark has created a new solar powered energy management system for hotels they believe will save hotels at least 35% in HLP costs over current sensor based technology.

Their solar panel system is integrated with the lights via the room controller, drawing power from man-made and natural light. Then, using Zigbee Smart Energy, the panel wirelessly communicates with all the electrical devices in the room – the minibar, doors, windows, lights, TVs, etc. The use of solar energy and wireless eliminates any need for re-wiring the hotel room meaning that installation is significantly simplified in existing hotel buildings. The Zenros Solar Touch panels can be installed without the use of any new cables or external power and retrofitted to any hotel.

The bigger picture is that the Zenros Solar Touch panels are ideal for appliances or locations that have no electrical grid nearby. The solar lights can be used all day. Instead of kicking on or off like most sensors, the panels adjust all the electrical devices in the room to what is happening. The reporting system detects when the system has changed and then calculates how much has been saved or what the interruption was to illustrate the savings that were generated.

The Zenros system has been sold to a 6,000-room luxury hotel in Qatar and is expected to go live later this year. To date, the company has raised €684,000 from private investors, and is based in Copenhagen.