The Atura Hotel in Albury NSW is one of the first buildings to take advantage of the NSW Government’s Energy Saving Scheme (ESS) to receive a financial incentive for replacing its existing gas boiler with an electric heat pump, which will reduce their energy bills and emissions.
In the regional southern NSW town of Albury, the Atura hotel has recently undergone a substantial energy improvement upgrade. While the Albury Atura launched in 2015, the original building was first opened as a Travelodge in 1973 by Gough Whitlam, as the first international-standard hotel offering for the region. It subsequently underwent a refurbishment ahead of its 2015 re-launch.
The interiors of the hotel are new and modern but until recently, the energy intensive gas boiler was estimated to be more than 20 years old. To improve the overall energy performance of the building and reduce carbon emissions, the hotel operator, EVT, decided to replace the gas boiler with an electric heat pump for hot water and take advantage of support made available by the NSW Government.
Mo Garib is the Senior Project Engineer – Hotels for EVT and worked on the heat pump upgrade project. He said that a key reason for undergoing the upgrade was to improve the overall sustainability performance of the hotel. “EVT is dedicated to improving the energy performance across its portfolio of hotels. As the existing boiler at the Atura Albury was close to reaching its end of life, it was a good opportunity to replace it with an efficient, electric alternative to reduce carbon emissions, and install new technology to improve the overall energy efficiency,” said Mo.
Ahead of the installation of the new equipment, EVT engaged EC Focus, an Accredited Certificate Provider (ACP) of the ESS to apply for an incentive. The ESS provides financial incentives to help NSW households and businesses install, improve or replace energy savings equipment and appliances. Financial incentives are in the form of tradeable certificates, called Energy Savings Certificates (ESCs). By nominating EC Focus to create and own the ESCs for the heat pump project, EVT received in return a cash discount on the cost of the energy savings activity. EVT estimated they saved over $23,000 through the program incentives for 1,475 ESCs.
A key challenge of the upgrade was in the design phase as the electric heat pump required more space than the existing gas boiler. To ensure enough hot water would be available to adequately service the hotel, EVT installed two heat pumps and four buffer tanks. The buffer tanks were installed inside the plant room, while the heat pumps were situated outside to improve ventilation and address space limitations. This configuration was chosen to ensure system redundancy and provide sufficient hot water capacity while enabling the system to operate efficiently on minimal energy consumption.
Once the design was confirmed and location of the heat pumps and buffer tanks secured, the process was straightforward. Construction commenced in February 2024 and was completed within three months. To enable greater control over its energy use and enhanced automation capabilities, EVT also installed an improved Building Management System (BMS) at the same time as the upgrades. EVT is proactively working to upgrade all its BMS systems to enhance control, monitoring and enable remote access. The cost savings received through the ESS allowed for greater expenditure on the BMS and helped to manage unexpected increases to the total budget of the project.
“The Atura Albury upgrade is a strong example of how the NSW Energy Security Safeguard can support genuine commercial energy performance improvements. EC Focus was proud to work with EVT on a fit-for-purpose, high-efficiency, low-global warming potential (GWP) refrigerant heat pump installation that is delivering meaningful cost and emissions savings; an approach that is both scalable and repeatable across similar sites”
Since completing the upgrade, EVT has noticed that their energy bills are noticeably lower and estimate that their gas reduction has fallen by 82% since the installation of the heat pump. They expect to see an improvement to their NABERS Energy for Hotels rating when their current rating expires at the end of the year. They also hope to use the Atura Albury as a test case and use the learnings from the project on future upgrades at other hotels in the EVT portfolio.
Contact us to learn how your business can improve its NABERS Energy rating and reduce emissions by leveraging incentives through the NSW Energy Savings Scheme.