Marriott in Deal to Reduce Energy Use at Hotels

The following was gleaned from an article in the Dec. 13 New York Times with the above title.

Marriott International, has signed a deal to reduce its hotels’ energy use, particularly during times of peak demand.

Marriott will save on electric bills and also earn incentive payments from utilities as a reward for its efforts during peak periods when utilities struggle to meet demand and often have to pay high prices for electricity.

But the success or failure of the program, will be in how well it can make the cuts without affecting its customers.

Marriott signed the agreement with Constellation Energy last month and plans to adopt the energy-saving program at 264 of its hotels in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic states and in Texas and California.

The VirtuWatt energy management system from Constellation will work with the hotel’s property management system to track power use and automatically activate the cuts when utilities are strained.

Constellation will cover about half the cost of installing the automated technology, but most hotels would break even on the investment within two years and generate at least 25 percent returns — and as much as 100 percent returns — by the end of the five-year agreement through the cost savings and the incentive payments.

“In effect, the hotels act like a generator in the market, and a reduction in consumption is roughly the same as the addition of a new generator to the system,” a utility representative said. “And so we pay them roughly what we would have paid a generator to produce the same amount of energy.”

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