Energy Savings

Why heat or cool a room beyond acceptably defined limits if the room is unsold or unoccupied?

A properly designed energy-management system (EMS) for hotel or motel guestrooms must be capable of achieving significant energy savings while concurrently enhancing guest comfort. EMS is a core INNCOM business, and this is the guiding precept in the design of every INNCOM EMS product.

Except for a very few areas of the world where energy costs are less than $0.04 per KWH or there are fewer than 2,000 degree-days per year, experts agree that at least two levels of temperature set-back make sense: Sold vs. Unsold, and Sold Occupied vs. Sold Unoccupied. Further refinements for humidity control and mildew suppression, seasonal adjustments, pipe-condensation removal, fresh-air replacement, and load shedding requirements are frequently needed and must be simple to implement and maintain. And a well-designed, user-friendly interface for hotel staff is an absolute essential.

INNCOM manufactures a number of EMS systems that provide efficient, lowest-cost climate control while increasing guest comfort through faster target temperature attainment. These systems range from very low-cost standalone products for controlling packaged terminal air conditioners (PTACs) in budget motels to advanced, centrally controlled systems for fan coil units (FCUs) in luxury hotels where heated floors, proportional valves and even automated drapery control become part of the EMS equation.

There are three hallmarks of every INNCOM energy management system:

• Failure Protection. The system is based on distributed intelligence, so that the climate in each room can be independently controlled, even if a central control terminal or communication link to the room is temporarily inoperative.
• Programmability. Each intelligent system component is easily and, typically, remotely programmable to provide maximum flexibility in addressing both existing conditions and unknown future needs.
• Expandability. The framework of the core system serves as an intelligent platform on which additional functionality, such as mini-bar access reporting, central lock control, and occupancy reporting to housekeeping, can efficiently and inexpensively be added.

Finally, all centrally controlled INNCOM EMS systems can readily be interfaced to virtually any building automation system (BAS) so that guestroom energy management becomes an important part of the hotel's overall energy control strategy, most importantly including load shedding algorithms.