SH Hotels & Resorts came to Legend Energy Advisors looking to centralize their energy procurement operations across properties. In addition to their high-level energy procurement needs, SH Hotels & Resorts shared a long-term vision to equip the hotels with leading energy and resource tracking technology to become the most efficient hotel properties in the world.

Traditional hotel configurations consist of separate and dedicated operational systems that leave the operator managing several different vendors for siloed systems. This creates significant inefficiency, increased installation and operating costs and installation of redundant equipment in IT closets. To address this, we have been working with SH Hotels & Resorts for Nearly 5 years to fully automate and integrate their management systems, address infrastructure improvement opportunities and improve their energy purchasing strategy.

Where Markets Meets Infrastructure

Prior to our engagement, SH Hotels & Resorts had been working directly with the utility and negotiated a particularly high rate for the market in which they operated. By taking a transparent approach to our pricing and fees and also by consolidating their procurement needs across several of their properties, we were able to reduce their overall financial liability by $80k in the first year. Consolidating your procurement strategy is an effective first step toward financial efficiency because it allows you to avoid multiple brokerage fees for each individual property.

Additionally, we began looking at some of the immediate changes to infrastructure that would enable us to purchase cheaper, cleaner natural gas for several of the systems we know to be higher energy users, like kitchens and building heating systems. We piloted these efforts in Central Park in 2016 by simultaneously transitioning SH Hotels & Resorts to a third-party energy supplier of natural gas and replacing inefficient electric stoves with gas stoves and retrofitting the boiler for gas operation instead of oil. Which reduced cost by over $80k per year and reduced GHG by 28% or about 100 tons of GHG annually.

Granular Energy Efficiency and Consumption Data

SH Hotels & Resorts further wanted to understand the intricacies of energy usage across their properties. In 2018 Legend began by outfitting the New York properties, Central Park, Brooklyn Bridge and Baccarat, with macro-level meters for gas, water and energy to understand which of the properties to prioritize before adding South Beach and West Hollywood in 2019. This initial metering provides a baseline reading that allows us to normalize for weather fluctuations, property size, occupancy and other factors that could account for increased energy and resource demand. We also conducted full property walk-throughs to determine ease and feasibility of alterations and installations that might be necessary for any retrofits. This initial metering process revealed that the Central Park and West Hollywood properties offered the greatest opportunities for improvement and became the first locations at which we installed sub-metering and tracking.

A major hurdle for SH Hotels & Resorts proved to be that most of the devices from which they needed to source data weren’t smart, connected devices. Our team began generating points of data throughout their operations by installing these necessary sensors and controls to then connect through our Legend Analytics™ platform, creating a smart building management system (BMS) where no prior management system existed. We are now in the process of outfitting water pumps, boilers, pool pumps, HVAC, gas connections, elevators, kitchen exhaust fans and thermostats etc. with BMS controls. Additionally, all the guest rooms are being outfitted with an intelligent EMS (Energy Management System) which will improve guest experience while significantly reducing the GHG profile of the guests stay completely autonomously. The EMS is also being fully integrated into the Legend AnalyticsTM platform. Each room will generate 19 discrete points of data, updated every 5 Minutes and automatically displayed to allow engineers and property managers to gauge abnormal fluctuations in resource demand or automatically signal any mechanical failures, thereby unifying the energy and resource management systems with the building management system. This allows a more efficient management process across the properties, signaling potential issues before they arise and preventing guests from needing to report malfunctioning equipment to hotel staff.

Additionally, our advisors work directly with these engineers and managers to suggest optimization opportunities. For example, we are working to integrate findings into room rental process: we can identify the most and least efficient rooms, enabling SH Hotels & Resorts to prioritize renting the most efficient rooms. Behind the scenes, door locks and other system integration into the Legend Analytics platform allow the hotels to reduce the amount of backbone infrastructure in the hotel, lowering cost and heat load from additional equipment. We can also leverage the SH Hotels & Resorts app, allowing guests to track their individual footprint for their stay and earn rewards for efficient stays.

Results

We continue to support SH Hotels & Resorts in their pursuit of being the world’s most sustainable hospitality company. We’re installing connected devices throughout their energy and water infrastructure and actively monitoring resource consumption throughout the ever-expanding portfolio. Our infrastructure retrofits and upgrades resulted in savings of over $80k per year and reduced GHG by 28% or about 100 tons of GHG annually, and growing.