Energy Submetering Delivers $10,000+ in Annual Savings

“Long-term, with Verdigris we’re able to monitor our electrical system without being present, and we don’t have that kind of monitoring equipment currently. I can find problems sooner rather than later by having this system installed.”
— Bill DeMartini, Chief Engineer, W Hotel San Francisco

The Challenge

Bill DeMartini, Chief Engineer of the W Hotel San Francisco, was searching for a way to identify the unseen problems in his building. He wanted to take energy efficiency beyond his hotel’s LEED Silver certification. To tackle this, he needed granular data to investigate the energy consumption at their award-winning restaurant, TRACE.

Without a cost-effective way to monitor kitchen operations 24/7, Bill lacked the facts required to optimize his kitchen. He engaged Verdigris to deliver the detailed data and insights he was hoping to find.

The Approach

Verdigris sensors monitor energy usage thousands of times per second. The granular, down-to-the-minute data collected is enriched by AI algorithms, and then analytics reveal clear actions to take. Helping organizations like the W Hotel find problems as soon as they happen, and decrease lost revenue and downtime from unplanned equipment outages.

The Results

Uncovering Equipment Inefficiency
Verdigris’ detailed monthly reporting revealed a dishwasher booster heater that was running
overnight even when the dishwasher it served was off – and the kitchen was empty. This equipment annually consumed more than $5,000 of energy.

“Where the system really paid off was where we could see equipment was running a lot longer
than we thought, or there was a bigger load on a circuit than we thought we should have,” said DeMartini. “[Because Verdigris monitors 24/7] we could identify when equipment was running or shutting down without being there.”

Identifying Unseen Equipment Failure
Large equipment should draw roughly equal amounts of power from their two or three phases. Verdigris data found a faulty circuit in the main dishwasher that was pulling 60% more energy than the other two, signaling a probable equipment fault.

After a prompt from Verdigris, W SF staff uncovered a broken heating element. This triggered the other two heating elements to work overtime to keep water inside the unit at the required temperature. This reduced the capacity of the unit, and could have led to premature failure of the dishwasher – a $30,000+ piece of equipment.

“Verdigris identified this broken component before we did our normal preventative maintenance, which is one really great value I’ve gotten from the service,” said DeMartini.

Increasing Staff Awareness
The high resolution of Verdigris energy monitoring showed individual devices that were remaining on after hours – a pizza oven, the light in a walk-in refrigerator or freezer, hood lights over the stove, and the kitchen TV. Cumulatively, these small devices were using more than $7,000 of electricity each year. Bill was able to intervene by installing motion sensors on some
devices and retraining staff procedures on others to reduce this unnecessary spend.

What’s Next?

Verdigris helps make organizations’ most valuable resource – key employees – more efficient. Delivering a high level of granular insight into circuit-level electricity consumption helped the W Hotel San Francisco enable a level of operational efficiency that simply wasn’t possible before.

DeMartini added, “Long-term, with Verdigris we’re able to monitor our electrical system without being present, and we don’t have that kind of monitoring equipment currently. I can find problems sooner rather than later by having this system installed.”