Sri Lanka hotels have room to cut running costs with less energy, water: IFC study

June 04, 2013 (LBO) - Sri Lanka's larger hotels are starting to use energy and water saving technology but there is potential to save operating costs including in those under construction, a study has found. International Finance Corporation a World Bank unit said among the three, four and five star hotels surveyed good practices were starting to emerge, but there was potential to save on air conditioning, lighting, hot water and water and waste.

Some hotels still used older centralized chillers for air conditioning which consumed between 1.0 to 1.3 kilowatt hours to cool a tonne of air, compared to 0.5 to 0.6 to kilowatt/ton for screw type multi-compressor units.

One hotel had found that efficient chiller cut cost in half and the payback was one and a half years with 18-hours a day operation.

Smaller hotels could install inverter air conditioner and recover the cost in five to six year with 12 hours of use.

Air conditioning consumed about 48 percent of the total electricity among the 23 hotels surveyed, lighting 13 percent, kitchen 18 percent and water pumping, pools and lifts 11 percent.

"Sri Lanka’s hotel industry consumes a large amount of electricity and there is significant