Austria
TUI Family Life Orquidea has installed a new system to drive energy efficiency in order to optimise its own energy consumption and reduce its CO2 emissions. The hotel, located on Gran Canaria’s southern coast, is part of TUI’s international concept hotel brands and operated by its Nordotel subsidiary. The family-friendly resort will launch a new system: hotel space heating and cooling will be provided by even more powerful solar panels and new, highly energy-efficient units.
27 July 2018
TUI Family Life Orquidea intensifies its focus on renewables
New system significantly reduces energy costs and CO2 emissions
Solar energy for the family resort
The key elements of the new system are the solar modules covering an area of 315 square metres, used to produce hot water. The existing solar panels covering 250 square metres will be replaced by considerably more efficient models. New panels covering an additional 65 square metres will be installed above the hotel’s street pergola. The resort thus optimally takes advantage of the climate in the Canary Islands, with a yearly average of 261 cloudless days and up to 3,200 hours of sunshine. At average sunshine hours, the energy generated by the solar panels will cover around 70 per cent of the hotel’s annual hot water consumption.
As the new system also includes an integrated combination of highly efficient cooling units and heat pumps, it provides both heating and cooling and thus saves additional energy. When the units deliver cooling, they produce a similar amount of waste heat, which is recovered and used for heating purposes, and vice versa. The units also continually adjust their operation to actual requirements without any performance fluctuations. The new heat pumps are only operated if the solar panels do not heat the water to the desired temperature.
Measures support TUI Group’s sustainability strategy
The new system that Nordotel has installed will not only help reduce energy costs by more than 150,000 euros per year, but also cut CO2 emissions by more than 800,000 kilogrammes, the equivalent of 1.96m miles driven in a car. The measures will thus contribute substantially to delivering TUI Group’s “Better Holidays, Better World“ sustainability strategy, whose goals include reducing the carbon intensity of its operations by 10 per cent by 2020. The TUI Family Life hotel in Gran Canaria is but one example showing how TUI Group will continue to grow with its partners and promote the use of more efficient and renewable energies in future.
