Every single operation in a hotel today is being monitored and questioned on a daily basis,” says J Sankareswaran, chief engineer, Taj Coromandel.
Often, the general managers do the questioning and at the hotel Sankareswaran works in, it is his job to present each department every morning their power consumption figures, usage and pattern of the previous day.
Any spike in usage, and a valid explanation must be provided by the erring department.
It is this sort of consistent and rigorous adherence to procedure and method that has seen the hotel keeping a lid on its energy costs.
What has really worked for the Taj Coromandel, however, has been its focus on renewable or alternate energy which has helped it realise 15% in savings in the last five years beginning 2010 through January this year.
The hotel began to purchase wind power four years ago around 2009-10 after the state government of Tamil Nadu permitted power purchase through a captive consumption scheme.After an initial investment in 2010 in IDFC-funded Green Infra (owned by Oriental Hotels, in turn owned by the Taj group) for 75 lakh units, it increased investment over the years and is currently contracted for 145 lakh units of wind power. It plans to purchase an additional 20 lakh units this year, taking its total tally to 165 lakh units.
Apart from the savings generated through using wind power alone, the hotel has also started using LED lights for its guest rooms and corridors and the engineering department’s proposal to switch fully to LED lights is envisaged to be completed during 2015-16.
To be sure, Taj Coromandel is among the few early adopters of renewable energy sources.
UV Krishna Mohan Rao, CEO, UV Krishna Mohan Rao Associates, says, “Some hotels have invested in renewable energy beyond the immediate boundaries of their campus and at a more appropriate place and price. We need to encourage more and more such thinking as this is going to be the order of the day in future.”
While installation costs for renewable energy sources have fallen to almost a tenth of their earlier costs in some cases, promoters of hotels today are also helped by the fact there are agencies now willing to work on a BOOT basis in case of lack of funds to invest in solar power panels or alternate energy sources.
While how quickly hotels switch to renewable energy will be critical in their energy savings efforts, for now, chief engineers are focused on generating savings using best practices, introducing new technology or other novel means.
For instance, Hyatt Regency Delhi’s director of engineering Suman Majumder has successfully struck an agreement with Sussex, UK-based PowaPlus to use their trademarked Powasava units that are installed in famous buildings worldwide and which are guaranteed to reduce electricity consumption by 7-8%. Majumder says, “We will receive two of their units for testing online with our system. If we are satisfied that the savings are there, then they will provide us with 26 units, paid for over a period of 60 months from a portion of the savings.”
Another notable investment is the arrangement with Thermax to install a reverse osmosis plant at Thermax’s cost within the hotel’s premises. “We will provide raw water and electricity and the plant will give us processed water at one-tenth the price of municipal water,” says Majumder. He adds, “The arrangement was made because the total dissolved solids of the groundwater had increased to about 750 parts per million, causing damage to linen, sanitary chrome fittings and stone floorings.”
Moreover, from small things like new guest-room door locks to larger considerations such as air handling units, treated fresh air units and variable frequency drives for the AC system, to a wide range of fire detection unit components and PA components, building management systems equipment and CCTV cameras, Majumder has judiciously guided the hotel as it invested in energy-savings equipment and technologies.
And while he doesn’t possess Sankareswaran’s advantage of being able to secure alternate energy from captive power sources, Majumder says the owning company of his 507-room hotel has given him the responsibility of managing their wind power plants in the state of Maharashtra and open-access power purchases from renewable sources in New Delhi.
So, for reducing the carbon footprint, he has submitted an application to the State Load Despatch Centre to allow the hotel to use open-access platforms for renewable energy. “The process was due to start in December 2014, but unfortunately the utility provider is creating a roadblock to open access and we are stuck at the midway point,” says Majumder.
Another instance of a hotel recognising the growing relevance of renewable energy is Meluha The Fern, in Mumbai. Already well-known for being eco-friendly and energy-efficient, its chief engineer Kundan Attarde says the hotel can save more if they shift to renewable energy. In fact, he reveals the hotel’s owners are in talks with wind and solar power vendors to draw up an arrangement for the same.
Even as these discussions are ongoing, the hotel has still managed to save over Rs 1 crore in energy costs in the last three years. Attarde reveals the hotel focused on LED retrofit lighting, electronic dimmers, eco-button in guest rooms, installed a Stored Thermal Latent (STL) tank, focused on water savings and heat recovery system, besides a number of smaller initiatives promoting reuse and recycling. The STL tank alone has helped the hotel save as much as Rs 27.94 lakhs over nearly three years. As AC units at hotels comprise as much as 50% of their energy costs, Attarde says the hotel focused on controlling this and the STL tank, working on the principle of heat transfer, was instrumental for the purpose.
However, Rao says the Indian hospitality sector loses out as it continues to ape the west in terms of architecture and design resulting in gross inefficiencies.
“We still have a long way to go in terms of reducing AC load by prudent design and architecture,” says Rao. He adds, “For e.g. glass facade all around continues to be a major design element. In some existing hotels, they keep adding to this, which is ridiculous. In the west, it makes sense for them in order to retain heat. But in India, AC is needed for cooling purposes for most of the time, with just a few exceptions. In the west, it is the other way around. Over 50% of their requirements are for heating.”
As a result, Rao says, “Instead of 150 tonnes of chiller, you end up installing 300 tonnes of chiller. Now, companies may say they have a chiller with the lowest energy consumption but that doesn’t make any sense. What’s the point in having an efficient chiller when your load should really be only 150 tonnes and you have already put up something which is 300 tonnes?”
Rao adds a hotel may get certified as a green building using the guise of ‘green glass’ but there’s no such thing, he says.
Having completed energy audits and implementations for over 250 hotels across India, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Middle East, Nepal and Bangladesh, Rao says he finds the Indian hospitality sector rarely consults the engineering team in the project design phase. “I pity the poor chief engineer running the hotel as he was not part of the original design but is made to answer for its energy performance,” says Rao.
Majumder concurs. Pointing out that hotel development project teams comprise architects, civil engineers, equipment managers, finance managers, material managers and others, Majumder says the hotel’s engineering team do not get a berth. He adds, “When a chief engineer comes on board, if he/she detects some fault in the planned system, those changes are almost impossible to make at that stage.”
Industry experts say a maximum of 10% energy savings can still be achieved through good practices alone. However, to get more benefits, more investments are necessary. But for a new hotel, this might not be possible for the first five years or more. The point to note, says Majumder, is that “in a well-designed hotel, additional investments may not be necessary at all”.
Another flawed design aspect Rao touches on is the use of electricity in the day to light up basement car parks, offices and corridors. “Simple and good architectural designs are there which can bring in light, not necessarily heat,” says Rao. “I reiterate you can have 100% saving in electricity in the day. There may be exceptions with some hotels implementing this, but mostly, this isn’t happening,” he adds.
Sarovar Hotels & Resorts’ GM for technical services (engineering & maintenance), Mukund Sahasrabudhe points out all of Sarovar’s new properties follow green building methods and also implement the Energy Conservation Building Code (ECBC). One of ECBC’s requirements, he says, is to have naturally ventilated back-of-the-house areas and the use of natural light in all public areas. He further points out Sarovar’s latest property, Marasa Sarovar Premiere in Tirupati, a pilgrimage destination, fully uses LED lights.
Some hotels are just plain lucky, like the recently opened JW Marriott Mussoorie Walnut Grove Resort & Spa in the famous hill town in the state of Uttarakhand. At Rs 4 per unit, the state has one of the lowest electricity rates in the country. The resort is keen on maximising this further to their advantage.
Ravi Sharma, chief engineer at the resort, says, “Our hotel already invested in solar panels during the pre-opening stage, used for hot water for the hotel. This has been an excellent investment as Mussoorie gets a lot of sunshine year-round. The solar panels help us save considerably on our power consumption. We are also in talks with other vendors to see if we can invest in other alternate sources of energy.”
In the fifth month of operations, Sharma says the hotel is looking to invest in more solar panels and is also in the process of purchasing heat pumps for better heating of the hotel building.
As engineers remain focused on procuring the best equipment and on best practices to save costs, what’s clear is they would be helped greatly if only there was a paradigm shift in the way new projects are envisaged.
Rao says one of the things that need to change is the consulting remuneration model. “In India, most of the remuneration is based on project cost. This needs to shift to a model based on efficiency. Hoteliers should tell architects to provide designs that uses zero electricity for lighting in the day and provide overall designs that give a certain output as per international green building standards. The remuneration should be related to this output. How much should be related to design and how much to efficiency is a matter of negotiation, but this fundamental shift in thinking needs to happen,” says Rao.
As international hotel chains introduce their brands to Indian shores, experts say hotel owners will do well to look to international best practices in developed countries.
And while India’s technical institutes continue to churn out the requisite numbers of engineers by the workforce, what is necessary more than ever is for the sector to introspect on a number of issues related to project design and architecture from an engineer’s viewpoint. Only then, will engineers truly have an edge.
