The Effect of Occupancy Patterns on the Energy Performance of Hotel Guestroom Area

A Hotel industry, being one of the vital elements of the commercial buildings, consumes a considerable portion of energy used in this sector. With regard to this specific field, this paper presents a case study focused on the energy consumption of a hotel by analyzing the monitored data of occupancy in the guestroom area and corresponding energy consumption during the period July06-May08. Starting from statistical methods and energy simulations, the aim of this study is to suggest an optimization protocol for placement/reservation of guests in the guestroom area for efficient final energy use in the hotel. The statistical methods are first applied to investigate the effect of occupancy on energy consumption and to evaluate their correlations; then a specific study has been carried out to find the floor of the hotel which gives weak relationship between the two aforesaid variables. The results from statistical methods show that in general there is a strong direct relationship between occupancy and energy consumption, and the third floor is the one which shows weak relationship between the two variables. This relationship gets stronger with the severity in ambient weather conditions. Moreover, in order to investigate the statistical results from the monitoring data and optimize the energy consumption, different simulations for the last ten rooms on the east wing of the third floor are being performed using a calibrated model. The simulation results not only validate the relationship between occupancy and energy consumption but also shows that energy consumption varies by changing the position of room on different sides and wings.