Industries
Hotels and resorts: guest comfort without the demand penalty.
A hotel’s bill is set by a few hot afternoons and a few busy evenings. Air conditioning, the laundry, the kitchen and water pumping all peak around the same hours, and a wedding or a full house can push demand past the Contract Demand. Here is what drives the bill, and how to see it department by department.
Your bill, line by line
| Bill line | Why it hits | What to watch |
|---|---|---|
| Maximum Demand | Air conditioning, laundry and pumping overlapping on a hot afternoon or event night | Running demand against Contract Demand during peak season and events |
| Power factor or kVAh | Chillers, AC compressors, lifts and pumps; capacitor banks not switching with the load | PF on the main incomer and on the HVAC panel |
| Energy rate | Commercial tariffs usually charge more per unit than industrial ones | Units per occupied room-night, every day |
| DG fuel | Diesel units cost far more than grid units during supply cuts | DG hours, DG units and grid-off time |
Where the energy goes in a hotel
Air conditioning, whether central chillers, VRF or split units, is usually the largest share. After it come the kitchen and its exhaust and cold rooms, the laundry, hot water, lifts, water pumping, lighting, the pool and outdoor lighting at a resort. Most of these run on their own panels, so a meter on each panel splits the bill by department.
- Rooms and corridors
- Kitchen and cold rooms
- Laundry
- Banquets and restaurants
- Water pumping and treatment
- Outdoor lighting, pool and landscape
Peak season, events and Maximum Demand
One wedding night or one full-house afternoon in May can set Maximum Demand for the month. Most of the load at that moment is guest-facing and cannot move, but the laundry, pumping to overhead tanks and pre-cooling of empty halls can. Shifting them away from the peak interval lowers the month’s demand charge without guests noticing.
DG and solar
Many resorts run diesel generators through supply cuts, and some have rooftop solar. Tagging each meter as grid, DG, solar or load shows DG hours and DG units, the share of solar used on site, and how often the grid failed.
Empty rooms and after-hours load
Air conditioning left on in vacant rooms and empty halls, corridor lighting in daytime and pumps running against full tanks all show up as base load. Units per occupied room-night, compared with occupancy, separates real demand from waste.
A worked example: the laundry and the peak
Say the laundry draws 60 kW and the pumps to the overhead tanks another 30 kW. If they run in the same half hour as the afternoon air-conditioning peak, the month’s Maximum Demand rises by about 95 kVA at a power factor near 0.95. At ₹300 per kVA that is about ₹28,500 a month, from one avoidable overlap.
The figures are illustrative; demand charges differ by state and category. The demand record shows which loads were running in your own peak interval.
Hotels and resorts in KONDUKTOR® EMS
- Every panel live: rooms, kitchen, laundry, HVAC, pumping, with the running Maximum Demand against Contract Demand.
- A panel hierarchy that splits the hotel’s bill by department, with unmetered load shown.
- Grid, DG and solar tagged separately, with DG hours, DG units and grid-off time.
- Power factor per panel, with alerts when it falls below your limit.
- A day-by-hour heatmap that shows after-hours and empty-room load.
Monthly department statements in rupees (rooms, F&B, laundry, banquets) and automatic daily and monthly reports to the general manager are set up for your property as part of your project.
Common questions
Can a hotel reduce its electricity bill without affecting guests?+
Usually, yes. Most savings come from back-of-house loads: moving laundry and pumping out of the peak interval, fixing power factor, switching off air conditioning in vacant rooms and halls, and checking DG running. Guest areas stay as they are.
How do we know each department’s share of the bill?+
Put a meter on each department panel and link them under the main incomer. The dashboard then shows each department’s units, demand and rupee share, with the unmetered remainder shown separately so nothing is counted twice.
Is energy per room-night a fair comparison?+
It is the most common one, as long as you compare similar seasons. Banquets and outside events add load that is not tied to rooms, so a hotel with a busy banquet calendar should look at banquet panels separately.
See your property’s bill department by department.
Book a live demo and see demand, DG and department-wise energy on meters like yours.