Hotel Bella Italia, a new boutique hotel in Sønderborg, Denmark, uses a GreenZone solution from OJ Electronics to manage heating and ventilation in the rooms, ensuring that guests get exactly the comfort they need – and that the hotel itself enjoys greatly reduced energy consumption.

The challenge
How can an entirely new hotel ensure comfort for its guests, keep energy costs down and enjoy technical installations that blend in seamlessly with the elegantly minimalist interiors? That was the challenge faced by the brothers Daniel and Michél Totaro as they expanded their family business –to include hotel management.

Intelligent and energy-efficient solution
The two brothers run a successful restaurant in Sønderborg and could perfectly well have rested on their laurels, but when the opportunity to build a hotel adjacent to the restaurant turned up, they jumped at the chance. They embarked on a three-stage project: a gentle remodelling of the restaurant itself and a two-stage construction project to build an entirely new hotel. The first stage of the hotel project was completed in November 2015. 

Thomas Grosen, who was project manager for all ventilation aspects of this project, immediately brought in OJ Electronics and suggested that the new GreenZone system should control the indoor climate of the hotel’s individual rooms. GreenZone is a sophisticated VAV zone control system capable of handling different temperature and comfort settings in up to 125 separate zones per AHU – while also saving plenty of energy in day-to-day operation. 

Energy savings pay off
Thomas Grossen says: "The really huge benefit for the hotel is the fact that the VAV zone control system saves plenty of energy. I am firmly convinced that spending a bit of extra money on controls in the beginning pays off – you’ll soon see returns on that investment. At this hotel the OJ GreenZone-system automatically controls the radiators and the cooling functions as required. This means that you never overshoot your targets, and you don’t see things counteracting each other. In conventional systems you might easily see guests switching on their radiators while also setting their ventilation system to cool the room, and that sort of thing guzzles up plenty of power for no reason at all. That won’t happen with the GreenZone system. It also switches off the radiator and the ventilation system in the room if the guest opens the window. When the window is shut, everything is switched back on.”

The result
The first guests have used the GreenZone touchscreen panels without any trouble, describing them as easy and intuitive – and the hotel is set to enjoy automatic energy savings for many years to come. Work on the ventilation system has progressed smoothly, hampered only by a minor inconvenience caused by a change in the format of the window frames. Thomas Grosen describes his co-operation with OJ Electronics as exemplary: “OJ Electronics get top marks for their assistance! They offer plenty of support, they’re there for you if you call them, and they’re always ready to come up with a solution if there’s something special you’d like a system to do.”

The project already looks set to become a well-deserved success: the brothers have received plenty of inquiries and bookings from the local business community without having done any advertising at all. Hopefully it won’t be long before twelve more hotel rooms shoot up next to the ones that have just been built.