I recently completed an energy audit for a hospitality venue with strong winter seasonality. After last season’s bills became a real pain point, they wanted to get ahead of it before the next busy period hit.

The hospitality and resort venue’s peak was being created when multiple loads overlapped at the same time, for example:

• Kitchen equipment ramping up for dinner service (combi oven, dishwasher cycling)
• HVAC recovering, split systems pulling hard right as service starts
• Outdoor radiant heaters switching on together on cold evenings
• Refrigeration compressors cycling in the background (cold room, freezer, bar fridges)
• Hot water boost kicking in at the wrong time

None of these loads were “wrong”, the issue was timing. A few normal things, happening together, in the same window, over and over.

You can work hard on efficiency and still get hit with big bills if your demand peak keeps getting set in the same part of the day. That’s why demand is so frustrating, it’s not always about using lots of energy, it’s about when it’s used.

Once the drivers were clear, I worked with the site staff to map out what was happening operationally, then we built a practical plan to smooth the ramp-up without disrupting service.

The priority actions were:

• Staggering warm-up and ramp-up loads (not everything at once)
• Smoothing HVAC recovery (earlier pre-heat, less aggressive setpoint changes)
• Shifting flexible loads away from the spike window
• Adding demand guardrails (alerts, simple procedures, basic limits where appropriate)

So, what was the outcome?

These projects are rewarding because they are often low to no cost measures that can have a big impact. In this case, we identified peak demand savings opportunities of approximately 35% per year, largely through better sequencing and a few control improvements.

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