Air Conditioner Management for Hotels and Motels

One of the challenges for Hotels and Motels is managing their energy consumption. Lighting can be managed through energy efficient light globes. Hot Water and Climate Control are the other two areas that are big for energy use.

Right now, Heat Pump Hot Water or Solar Hot Water are options for Hotels and Motels, and these really can help. Climate can be a real issue though, managing the heating and cooling loads. Thankfully there are solutions. Most solutions however only work with fixed Air Conditioner and Heat Pump units, where there is a fixed controller on the wall. Many hotels and Motels use Split System Heat Pump Air Conditioners which cannot be managed in this way.

One solution to this is to provide special remotes that have limited temperature and fan settings available. These work, but they do not take into account timer functionality, the ability to boost fans when people first enter rooms, or turn off remotes when people leave the room.

Climate Two, soon to be release by Redshift Wireless is a possible solution. Our system allows you to control any IR controlled Air Conditioner either within the room, or remotely in order to reduce energy consumption and therefore to reduce running costs.

The way this works is that we install a device on the wall that connects to the Internet via WiFi. We also replace the in-room remote with an inexpensive generic unit. When the remote is operated, it is received by our unit on the wall. The unit sends a request to our servers via the Internet to verify if the new setting is permitted. If it is, the new settings are then sent to the Air Conditioner.

This might sound like a lot of work, but it normally happens in well under a second. It means that you no longer have to worry about guests heating the room to 28C in winter or cooling to 18C in summer, all because they have left a door open

We can also do things like require the guests to re-enable the Air Conditioner every few house, if they are in fact in the room. The front desk is even able to turn Air Conditioners off from the front desk when people leave for the day or check out. And for those important guests – well, you can even remove any limits, just for them.

We can even remind you when to clean your filters, saving an extra 5-15% of energy.

Alternately, we have our Climate One product which has all the functionality above except the extra remote. In this case, guests would need to use a Phone, Tablet, PC or Computer to change the settings. Whilst this is not appropriate in most cases, it is idea for some high end establishments where lighting and sound is controlled by tablet computers, or where there are long term guests.

If any of this sounds of use, please contact us at Redshift Wireless.

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Darryl Smith is the CEO of Redshift Wireless and the inventor of the Climate One and Climate Two products