Hotel stays can take a big chunk out of your wallet, in large part because of high operating expenses. But if a hotel could save up to 20 percent by better managing its heating and cooling systems, maybe that savings would be passed on to the consumer.
Israeli startup Vortex Energy has developed the software to reduce not only operational costs but also climate-changing CO2 emissions – and that might heat up the usually staid hotel space.
For its pilot project, Vortex Energy retrofitted the boiler room in Ramat Gan’s ritzy Leonardo City Tower with special sensors and monitors that collect data on temperature fluctuations.
“For a typical machine room for air conditioning and heating, we’ll have 400 to 500 inputs,” Vortex cofounder and vice president of sales and marketing Avi Mizrachi tells Israel21c.
Those inputs measure both the temperature of the air being generated by the boiler system and the outside temperature. “We take it all into our computer, do the math and decide what to do,” Mizrachi says.
The outside temperature is key to the equation. If it’s 30 degrees Celsius at midday and you want the temperature inside the building to be 23 degrees, for example, you have to chill the water in the air-conditioning system to about 7.5 degrees, Mizrachi says. But when the temperature outside drops to 27 degrees, the water has to be chilled to only 9 degrees.
For each degree, a hotel can save 5% on its energy costs.- Israel21c
