InsideIQ member firm reduces energy costs for Australian resort

ATLANTA –  A failing building automation system (BAS) and a chiller plant at the end of its useful life were making the Sheraton Mirage Hotel in Queensland, Australia an expensive and inefficient building to operate. These problems and more were discovered when Airmaster Australia conducted an energy audit at the iconic hotel on Queensland’s Gold Coast. By applying innovative solutions, Airmaster reduced energy consumption at the hotel, saving the resort more than $250,000 annually.

 

Airmaster Australia is a leading provider of HVAC and building automation in Australia and South East Asia and is a member of the InsideIQ Building Automation Alliance, an international alliance of independent building automation contractors.

 

“The audit painted a fairly bleak picture of conditions at the hotel,” said Noel Courtney, chief executive officer for Airmaster Australia. “If the resort had experienced a catastrophic failure or a big leak in their chillers, it was doubtful we could have kept them going. So there was a risk to the business.”

 

Faced with that risk, the hotel contracted with Airmaster to replace the BAS and the chillers, as well as implement additional energy conservation measures. Airmaster exchanged the obsolete, proprietary BAS with modern direct digital controls and installed an energy efficient chiller plant that also serves as a source for heating the resort’s swimming pool, replacing a gas-fired boiler. These improvements resulted in an overall sixteen percent savings in energy costs at the Sheraton Mirage, including using 60 percent less gas and saving 93,255 kW of electricity each month.

 

“InsideIQ firms are not beholden to any one manufacturer, so they examine each customer’s challenges with the goal of finding the best solution to address their specific needs,” said Leroy Walden, president of the InsideIQ Building Automation Alliance and vice president of Atlanta-based McKenney’s Inc. “Airmaster Australia used the unique circumstances of the Sheraton Mirage to enable them to substantially reduce energy consumption, demonstrating the advanced thinking InsideIQ members apply to every project.”

 

“So far, we’ve realized all of the gas consumption savings we projected – and then some,” said Courtney. “We’ve also had a significant reduction in electrical energy consumption, despite an eight percent increase in occupancy and an 18 per cent increase in thermal conditions measured through cooling degree day data.”