User Manual

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Siemens Schweiz AG
Infrastructure & Cities Sector - Building Technologies Division
Gubelstraße 22, CH-6300 Zug, Switzerland
Press Relations: Vera Klopprogge
Phone: [phone]
E-mail: [e-mail]
Siemens AG
Infrastructure & Cities Sector – Building Technologies
Division
Rödelheimer Landstr. 5-9, 60487 Frankfurt am Main,
Germany
The project, which was initiated by Otto Lindner, CEO of Lindner Hotels AG, immediately produced
the desired effect. Over the next few years, the company saved between €300,000 and €320,000 a
year in power costs through organizational measures alone. The initiative was preceded by
technician workshops, the enhancement of existing energy indicators for different hotel classes, an
employee bonus system as well as a Best Maintenance Practice Award for the hotel with the
highest savings quotas. Currently, the hotel group is seeking certification for all 34 Lindner hotels
from the Deutsches Institut für Nachhaltigkeit und Ökonomie (German Institute for Sustainability
and Economics – DINO). The focus is not only on energy and the environment but also on
management aimed at sustainability.
Costly energy data recording
While going a long way towards harnessing the achievable savings potential, the largely manual
recording of energy consumption, regular training for operations technicians and motivation
campaigns for hotel personnel did not come close to exhausting it. The more operations
technicians learned about energy efficiency in buildings, the more they realized that monthly
readings would not be enough to identify deficiencies in the facilities and control strategies. In
addition, it was not feasible simply for manpower reasons to adhere to a strict schedule for the
readings, for example every 30
th
day of the month at 12:00 p.m. With the tools available at the time,
additional energy saving measures came only at the expense of comfort, which, however, was
undesirable in an industry focused on star ratings. Nevertheless, the Lindner Group's engineering
department wanted to further improve the energy efficiency of their building systems in order to
compensate for energy cost increases.
The fact that in recent years the Lindner Group had installed building automation systems in most
new hotels financed by investors was very beneficial. While energy cost increases were one
motivating factor, price reductions and additional features offered by building automation and
control systems convinced Lindner’s management that these systems had become more
economical. In the case of Siemens’ current Desigo PX system, for example, most of the existing
meters used in the building for energy monitoring and control (EMC) can be integrated into the
system.
Lindner’s technicians were impressed by the functional and economic benefits of the Desigo
system technology and gave preference to the Siemens building automation system for new
buildings and retrofits. The result was a highly cooperative partnership between Lindner Hotels AG
and the Siemens Building Technologies Division.