A fine choice: in March of 2004, Starwood Hotels was looking for ways to mitigate the penalties imposed by the Southern California Air Quality Management Division for a boiler at its Westin hotel in Long Beach that failed to meet rigorous state standards. This is the story of facing three retrofit choices and choosing the high road to lower NOx

Engineered Systems, May, 2006 by William L. Rodenberg

EMSI recommended the installation of KC1000 boilers by AERCO due to their low NOx emissions and the fact that they met the air quality standards required by SCAQMD. Starwood accepted the proposal, drew up scope of work documents, and put the project to bid. A Fullerton, CA, firm--Automatic Boiler Company--was selected to perform the removal and replacement of the boiler plant, including the proprietary boiler management system.

The plant was designed with future upgrades in mind: When the DHW loop that feeds guest rooms needs to be replaced, additional modules can be added to the new configuration.

CONCLUSION

Starwood Hotels continues to demonstrate why they are a leader in both the hospitality industry and the Southern California business community. Rather than doing the bare minimum to fulfill the State regulations for NOx emissions, Starwood chose to comply with the spirit of the law, even as it became clear the property would not remain part of their portfolio.

William L. Rodenberg founded Energy Management Strategies, Inc. in 1995 to provide impartial, full-service energy management consulting services to utilities and property owners. For the past 10 years, he has helped his customers operate at the cutting edge of energy management practices.

Average temperatures provided by CityRating.com.

For more information about Starwood, please visit www.starwood.com

For more information about Energy Management Strategies, Inc, please visit www.smarterenergy.us.

At What Cost A 'Comp'?

Energy management's obvious impact area is in energy expenditures and smooth operation, but what is energy management's potential impact on guest satisfaction?

At one time, guest complaints about heating, air conditioning, or the availability of unlimited hot water were a nuisance but had little impact on the bottom line. Those days are gone. There are more hospitality choices available to the consumer, while the Internet can turn one dissatisfied guest into a public relations nightmare. In an attempt to retain their competitive edge, many hotels commonly give dissatisfied guests a partial or full refund of the price of a room to compensate for the lapse in service.

Outdated, improperly sized, poorly maintained, or non-functional boiler plants lower the profit margins in the hospitality industry. Take, for instance, a hypothetical 300-room hotel with an underperforming DHW plant. Assuming that the DHW system is operating at 90% of capacity, the facility can expect a minimum of 30 guests to check out with major complaints about their cold showers. If each of those rooms is sold at S 150 and is written off in its entirety, the property loses $4,500 before the additional costs of operation are factored in. Five nights like that in a quarter and a property is looking at an annual loss of $90,000.

This is a hypothetical scenario--given the proprietary nature of balance sheets, a real-world example is unavailable--but a facility can run its own analysis to calculate the annual cost of an underperforming system. By any calculation, a poorly functioning boiler plant is a liability: its inefficiency raises the cost of operation and jeopardizes guest satisfaction.