Mitsubishi Electric's Melcotel controller delivers 40 per cent energy reduction for air conditioning at Leicester hotel

(12/04/2010)

According to a recent six-month trial, Mitsubishi Electric's specialist Melcotel™ controller has delivered a 40 per cent energy reduction for the air conditioning at Premier Inn’s new city centre site in Leicester.

The hotel has 135 bedrooms using an average consumption of 17.20kWh a day throughout the 19 storey building. Now, with the Melcotel controller in place, the system is consuming just 7-8kWh of energy per day - an average 40% reduction in energy consumption for the whole system.

“We believe we can also increase this further and will continue to monitor the hotel over the coming winter,” explained Mitsubishi Electric’s controls expert, Sebastien Desmottes,

The Melcotel controller works with both key card and non-key card systems to ensure that air conditioning is not working needlessly when rooms are empty or if guests decide to open a window without switching off the heating or cooling.

Specifically designed for the mass-market hotel sector, the controller is an evolution in Mitsubishi Electric’s PLC (Programmable Logic Controller) and can be retrofitted as well as being ideal for new builds.

At the start of the trial, the air conditioning was set to turn off automatically at 1am, but this still allowed guests to override the system.

Mitsubishi Electric then introduced a G50 controller which meant that the air conditioning could be programmed to automatically shut off five times a day at 9am, 11am, 1pm, 4pm, and 8pm, when there was a distinct possibility of the rooms being empty and the potential for energy to be wasted.

This lead to some reduction in energy use, but now with Melcotel, the system automatically responds to the requirements of each individual room, resetting the air conditioning to a predetermined setting and constantly monitoring the temperatures of any unoccupied rooms.

The air conditioning in these empty rooms will only come on to keep the temperature within a set range, which has the double advantage of conserving energy whilst ensuring that the room reaches the desired temperature quicker when a guest enters the room.

“We developed Melcotel after working with hotel owners who wanted a more cost effective method of maintaining low energy consumption whilst still allowing hotel guests to control the temperature in their own room,” explained Desmottes.

Temperatures are recorded by a sensor within the controller and windows can also be connected to the system so that when they are opened, the air conditioning switches off to conserve energy.

Melcotel works with Mitsubishi Electric’s advanced City Multi systems and one unit is able to control up to 250 indoor units. Wireless technology allows the Melcotel to be accessed remotely when used in conjunction with a Mini M2M offering further control and monitoring facilities to hoteliers.

Related categories:  Air conditioning - commercial and industrial   Energy Conservation