WHY IS MY HOTEL ELECTRICITY BILL SO HIGH
1. We Don't Really Know Where the Electricity Is Going !
The biggest problem is often the simplest: we don't actually know where the electricity is being used.
We can stare at an electricity bill for hours, but it will never tell us where those kilowatt-hours were consumed or when they were used.
An energy consultant may have listed every item of electrical equipment in the hotel, calculated the power each one requires, recommended LED lighting, compared room temperatures with industry guidance, suggested variable speed drives or even proposed permanent cloud-based monitoring.
Yet one important question often remains unanswered:
Where is the electricity actually being used
Until electricity consumption is measured at the hotel's electrical sub-boards over a period of normal operation, we are still making assumptions. But that's not the end of the story. Measurement replaces assumptions with evidence, allowing attention to be focused on the equipment and systems that are genuinely responsible for high electricity consumption. Only once that evidence is available can we analyse it and ask ourselves why is it doing that?
2. We Are Forced To React
Imagine this scenario.
At 6.00 pm the guest in Room 510 rings reception to complain that their shower is cold. We can't afford to wait. Maintenance are dispatched immediately to the plant room.
They touch the outlet pipework – it's hot.
They touch the return pipework – it's cool.
Water is circulating, but not fast enough.
They start looking for the problem. It can't be the boiler because the water is leaving hot, but it's returning much cooler than expected. Something has changed.
Then they spot the Variable Speed Drive (VSD).
That must be it.
They don't have the passcode to adjust the settings, so they bypass the drive completely. Ten minutes later the return pipework is warming up nicely. The guests have hot water again.
Crisis averted.
The maintenance team return to what they were doing before and, understandably, the temporary fix is forgotten.
The problem is that the pump is now running at full speed, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It's a 10 kW pump, deliberately sized to cope with peak demand, but it is now operating completely uncontrolled. It is literally eating into the hotel's profits.
At an electricity cost of 18p per kWh, the additional cost of running a pump continuously at full speed instead of under variable speed control can run into many thousands of pounds every year. In some cases, it can approach £15,000 per annum—and nobody knows it is happening.
This is where proper electrical measurement makes all the difference.
Monitoring the plant room sub-board immediately highlights the abnormal electrical consumption and prompts an energy diagnostic engineer to investigate further. He doesn't simply look at the data; he goes to the plant room and examines the equipment. He finds the Variable Speed Drive still in place but permanently bypassed.
The recommendation is unlikely to be an expensive new pump or a replacement heating system because, in this example, neither is faulty. The system is doing exactly what it was designed to do. It simply needs the Variable Speed Drive to be correctly reinstated and adjusted so the pump once again runs only as fast as the system actually requires.
Sometimes the biggest savings don't come from buying new equipment. They come from discovering that perfectly good equipment is no longer being used as it was intended.
3. We Assume It's Normal "It's a hotel...of course the electricity bill is high."
Air conditioning. Kitchens. Laundry. Leisure facilities. Hundreds of bedrooms. Of course a hotel is going to use a lot of electricity.
But then we ask a different question.
Does it really have to?
Hotels will always consume significant amounts of electricity. The question isn't whether your bill is high...
it's whether it's higher than it needs to be.
Many hotels assume a large electricity bill is simply part of running a successful business. Sometimes it is.
But over the years we have repeatedly found pumps running harder than necessary, fans operating long after demand has fallen, control systems no longer behaving as originally intended, and equipment quietly consuming electricity around the clock simply because no one had reason to question it.
The surprising thing is that none of these problems are obvious. Guests are comfortable. The hotel is operating normally. Nothing appears to be wrong.
The aim is to use less electricity.
Not by asking guests to turn the heating down.
Not by asking staff to work harder.
But by identifying the electricity your hotel simply doesn't need to be using in the first place.
That's why we don't begin by recommending new equipment or expensive upgrades. We begin by measuring exactly where your electricity is going. Only then can we separate the electricity your hotel genuinely needs from the electricity it is simply wasting.
4. We Blame People
When electricity bills are higher than expected, it's only natural to look for someone to blame.
"The kitchen staff forgot to switch the extract fans off."
"Housekeeping left the corridor lights on."
"The guests have all got their air conditioning turned down to 18°C."
Sometimes those things do happen.
But let's be honest.
Hotels are busy places. Staff work long shifts. They're interrupted. They deal with guest requests, emergencies and changing priorities. At the end of a twelve-hour shift it's hardly surprising that the occasional light is left on or a switch is forgotten. Guests are on holiday or travelling for business. They're paying for comfort, not thinking about your electricity bill.
The question isn't whether people sometimes forget.
They do.
The question is whether your building should depend on people remembering in the first place.
Simple timer controls, occupancy sensors, BMS schedules and properly programmed control systems can quietly perform many of these routine tasks automatically. They don't get distracted. They don't get tired. They simply do the job, day after day.
SWP don't look for people to blame.
SWP look for opportunities to make the building work smarter.
5. So Where Does It Go?
By now you've probably recognised some of these situations.
Perhaps you've accepted that high electricity bills are simply part of running a hotel.
Perhaps you've reacted to equipment failures rather than having time to investigate why they happened.
Perhaps you've blamed the staff... or even the guests.
The truth is that none of these things answers the one question that really matters.
Where is all that electricity actually going?
Every hotel has an electricity bill.
Very few know how much is being used by the bedrooms, the kitchens, the laundry, the air conditioning, the pumps or the plant room.
Without that knowledge, reducing electricity consumption becomes little more than guesswork.
That's why our investigations begin with measurement.
Not because we're looking for faults.
Not because we're trying to prove anyone wrong.
But because once you understand how your hotel is actually using electricity, you can make informed decisions based on evidence rather than assumptions.
Sometimes the answer is a simple timer.
Sometimes it's a control setting.
Sometimes it's equipment that has quietly drifted away from its original operating strategy.
Whatever we find, it all starts by answering one simple question.
Where does the electricity actually go?