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Control system more than halves hotel air-conditioning costs
Published: April 2010
Premier Inn has reduced the energy used for air conditioning for its new city-centre site in Leicester by more than 50%. The savings were revealed by a 6-month trial following the installation of Mitsubishi Electric’s Melcotel controller. Before the controller was installed, the 135 bedrooms in this 19-storey building had an average electricity consumption of 17.2 kWh a day, which has been reduced to 7 to 8 kWh a day — a saving of 59 to 53%, respectively. The Melcotel controller works with keycard and non-keycard systems to prevent air conditioning working when rooms are empty or when guests open a window without switching off the heating or cooling. At the start of the trial, air conditioning was set to turn off automatically at 1 a.m., but guests could still over-ride the system. The introduction of a G50 controller enabled air conditioning to be programmed to shut off five times a day at 9 a.m., 11 a.m., 1 p.m., 4 p.m. and 8 p.m., when there was a distinct possibility of rooms being empty. The later introduction of the Melcotel system provides automatic response to the requirements of each room, resetting the air conditioning to a predetermined setting and constantly monitoring the temperatures of unoccupied rooms. The temperature in occupied rooms is kept within a set range to conserve energy and provide a rapid return to the desired temperature when a guest enters the room. Sebastien Desmottes, controls specialist with Mitsubishi Electric, explains, ‘We developed Melcotel after working with hotel owners who wanted a more cost effective of maintaining low energy consumption whilst still allowing hotel guests to control the temperature in their own room.’ For more information on this story, click here: April10, 80 Related articles: 
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