By Lauren Kramer

Remember the last time you stayed in a hotel? In all probability, you forgot to turn off the lights when you left the room, and you almost certainly didn’t change the temperature. That means even when your room was unoccupied the hotel’s energy costs for that room were high. Such scenarios, when lights, televisions and HVAC systems run needlessly in a hotel room, cost hotels as much as 20 percent of their electricity budgets.

Enter Rami Belson, 48, an Israeli engineer from Nahariya who relocated to Vancouver in 1984. Examining this wasted energy, Belson came up with an energy management sensor called SentryWatt that uses infra-red technology to monitor guestrooms for occupancy and adjust room temperature and lighting accordingly. It’s an uncomplicated answer to hotels’ soaring energy bills, and especially to the massive amounts of energy wasted when guests vacate their rooms.

 “Hotels are struggling to control their costs while faced with the challenges of a soft economy and the decline in business and leisure travel,” says Belson, CEO of Richmond, BC-based Energex Inc. “Our goal is to allocate saved dollars back into their Available Daily Rate (ADR) or their net profit per room, while helping them reduce their environmental demands.”  

There are two components to the sensors: the sensors themselves are made by Rokonet in Rehovot, Israel, while the Energy Management System, a small electronic board connected to the sensor and the HVAC unit, is manufactured in Richmond.

Belson says he noticed the amount of energy waste in North America the moment he arrived. “Growing up in Israel we were always conscious about energy and being responsible about water use. When I moved to Canada it struck me that all the hallways in public buildings were lit all the time, whereas in Israel you press a button for a few minutes of light to get you where you need to go.” (click here to read about Israeli energy conservation at Lizrael blog)

Belson began playing with sensors, connecting them together to learn how they worked. He began by doing energy savings for buildings, but by 1997, when he saw the energy waste ongoing in hotels, he determined that sensors were the ideal way to conserve energy without having to completely overhaul the building system. SensorWatt was ready to install by 2001.

Since then, there has been a long list of hotel clients whose energy bills have dropped dramatically since the installation of Energex’ SensorWatt in their suites. The Holiday Inn in North Vancouver experienced a reduction of almost 18% of their energy bills, and pilot testing by BC Hydro confirmed energy savings from these sensors alone of about 36%. Partnering with his wife Ellia and a team of five staff, Belson has been installing sensors in hotels like Sheraton, Hilton, Warwick International, Holiday Inn, Radisson and others all over the world. The company has export agreements to 14 countries and is poised for dramatic growth.

This is a good time to be in the energy saving business, Belson admits. “Finally there is an awareness of the advantages of being environmentally friendly, and the high cost of energy is a big driver,” he says. “In addition, these days many builders and developers are striving to meet the standards set by the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED). We provide an opportunity for them to meet some of those standards at a relatively low cost.”

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