Hilton Anaheim has spent $3.5 million in about 18 months to upgrade utilities and cut costs, in work and planning that have touched air conditioning, food waste, and room thermostats.
The push is projected to save the hotel—the largest locally by rooms and meeting space—$800,000 annually, according to Director of Property Operations Steve Karwoski.
After recouping its investment, “it all goes to the bottom line.”
The 1,573-room Hilton began the revamp in late 2014 during the latter part of its latest room and public space renovations. A marketing exec at the time said upgraded air conditioning and elevator work were “behind-the-scenes activity you don’t notice” until they don’t work.
The hotel’s owners, a Delaware-based investor group with ties to Dubai that paid $216.1 million for it in 2012, have approved each element of the effort, Karwoski said.
The air conditioning work began paying off immediately when Hilton Anaheim nabbed a $50,000 rebate check from the city of Anaheim Public Utilities, he said.
It came when the hotel paid $3 million to install a “turbo core” in its air conditioning system to reduce the power needed to run chilled water through 14 stories of hotel rooms, then placed a water-saving piece into the same system to push the water through seven times instead of just once as before.
“The actual chiller, the turbo core, is a big energy pig—lots of electricity,” Karwoski said, and on the “chilled water loop, we recycle and recapture the water now.”
Cold water circulation is a key element of air conditioning systems—the Hilton’s requires several million gallons a month—but it’s invisible to guests. The Nalco water saver is on the roof, and the ArctiChill turbo core sits in the hotel’s basement power plant.
“People don’t see anything different,” Karwoski said. “We see it on the electric bill.”
Hilton Anaheim shaved $40,000 to $50,000 a month from an electric bill of $200,000 to $300,000, and reclaimed water on the air conditioning alone has cut its overall water consumption by 25%.
“We’d done the low-flow toilets,” Karwoski said. “Now we recirculate what would ordinarily go down the drain.”
Clean Garbage
The Hilton’s second effort will mean sending more material down those drains.
It plans to test Orca, a disposal system that mixes food scraps with oxygen, water and a “micro-organism solution” to churn up to 2,400 pounds of food waste per day into “environmentally safe water that flows straight into the municipal sewage system,” according to the product’s website.
“Enzymes eat the food matter and leave behind the liquid,” Karwoski said, in a process similar to earthworms eating dirt and excreting castings behind them.
Hilton spends about $14,000 a month to have compacted food waste hauled away and expects to cut that cost in half as the Orca goes operational. It also requires less work from employees, who no longer have to take out such trash.
Each unit costs about $50,000, and the Hilton needs two—one for its main food service kitchen, the other for banquets. The technology has been used at other hotels the chain manages.
“We’re seeing results from other Hilton properties, and we’re going to request funding from the ownership,” he said.
Units could go live as early as the fourth quarter.
Climate Change
In the works for next year is a new thermostat system for guest rooms.
“This would happen with the next room renovation at the end of 2017,” Karwoski said.
The idea is to control climate in each room from the front desk via the hotel’s computer network. Staff could set temperature limits, change “set-points” based on seasons, and activate thermostats when guests check in.
The system would sense when rooms are empty and adjust thermostats accordingly. It also means less “load” on the new chilled water equipment—the upgrade that kicked energy savings up a notch a year and a half ago.
Hilton is gathering data from 40 rooms where new thermostats are in place but unconnected to the front desk.
“Right now it’s just a motion sensor, and there’s not as much functionality,” Karwoski said. The system isn’t hooked into the computers but can still provide ‘proof-of-concept’ to support a future changeover.
He said it will cost $500,000 to install it in rooms and that the payback is eight to 10 years.
“It would save money and be easier for our guests to use,” he said—twin goals that have guided changes at the hotel.
Karwoski said corporate clients ask how much energy their employees who stay or hold meetings at the Hilton use, as part of those companies’ corporate responsibility programs.
“We can show them how much energy their people used,” Karwoski said, down to individual guest rooms.
“We know how much trash they generate in a day,” he said, noting a “big spike in pizza, beer bottles, recycling” when guests check out. n
