The easiest way to work out energy consumption is per bedroom. This figure can then be multiplied by however many guest rooms a hotel has, so whether it’s a small boutique hotel with less than 25 rooms or a large hotel with over 100, you can estimate the total energy use.
Let’s start by calculating the approximate energy use per bedroom in a small hotel. Generally, small hotels are defined as those that have 25 rooms or less and each room is approximately 60 m2. For every square meter of one bedroom, around 300 kWh of gas is used per year and around 100 kWh of electricity. These figures are for just one metre squared, and so we will need to multiply each of these fuels by 60 m2.
300 kWh of gas * 60 m2 = 18,000 kWh per bedroom per year
100 kWh of electricity * 60 m2 = 6,000 kWh per bedroom per year
You can use these answers to narrow down the energy usage even further to per month and even per day.
To get the monthly hotel energy usage, you can divide these figures by 12 and then multiply them by the number of rooms you have in your hotel.
This means that the average small hotel uses approximately 37,500 kWh of gas per month and 12,500 kWh of electricity per month. could mean that a large hotel with 100 bedrooms could use around 266,000 kWh of gas and 80,000 kWh of electricity per month
Obviously, these calculations only take into account the total energy used by bedrooms. If you have additional restaurants within the hotel, these will use significantly more energy than we’ve stated above.
Larger hotels have more rooms and generally, each bedroom is slightly larger too, though this isn’t always the case. For our calculations, we’ll say that the average floor area is 80 m2. Compared to a smaller hotel, the average gas and electricity usage per m2 per year goes up to around 400 kWh for gas and 120 kWh for electricity. Using the same calculations as above, this
Nowadays, most hotels have lifts to make it easier to get to the top floors, particularly when you have heavy luggage to carry. Lifts also make a building more accessible. But how much electricity does a lift use?
A lift actually only uses a small amount of electricity, so you don’t have to worry about it sending your electricity bill sky high. It’s thought that a lift uses approximately 2.5 Wh of electricity to move just one floor. Therefore, a lift that has to move 10 floors, for example, could use 25 Wh of electricity, but this is still a very small amount.
Hotels that have on-site gyms may use significantly more energy than those that don’t. A standard gym contains running machines, electric bikes, televisions and air conditioning that all use electricity. It’s hard to say exactly how much electricity a gym uses, as it depends on the size, opening hours, number of machines, etc. Some days more energy may be used than on other days, as it depends how many people come through the door, and also how they use their time (free weights vs. a treadmill, for example).
However, you might be able to get an estimate by working out how much electricity certain machines and devices use.
A treadmill, and similar machines such as a step or rowing machine, will use approximately 1.5 kWh of electricity for every 60 minutes that it’s running. Therefore, if the treadmill is running for around five hours, it will use 7.5 kWh of electricity per day.
Air conditioning is likely to be one of the biggest consumers of electricity in a gym. To keep a gym nice and cool, an air conditioning unit will likely be sized at around 3 kW. If such a unit was to stay on for 10 hours, then it would use 30 kWh of electricity each day.
Next up is lighting. Generally gyms, like offices, use LED panels to light the space. These don’t use a huge amount of electricity, but will still contribute towards your energy usage. Each panel uses around 25 W, or 250 W (0.25 kWh) if they’re left on for 10 hours. For our calculations, we’ll say that the gym has 15 panels, so lighting uses approximately 3.75 kWh per day. This will be significantly more if the panels are fluorescent instead of LED.
With all of this in mind, taking into account lighting, air conditioning and machinery, a gym with up to 10 machines could use around 109 kWh of electricity per day. This could be significantly more if the gym is larger than we have calculated, has more machines or is open 24 hours a day.
