Retro-commissioning means increasing the resource efficiency of existing building systems through systematic upgrades to lighting and heating, air conditioning and ventilation equipment. For Caesars, this typically includes replacing obsolete central plant controls with state-of-the art technology, installing new sensors, upgrading equipment, rebuilding pumps and converting when possible, constant-volume air and water delivery systems to variable flow to reduce unnecessary pumping and fan energy.
A typical retro-commissioning initiative can save up to 15% of energy consumption at any of our destinations. Overall, since the start of our retro journey, we have reduced our energy consumption by over 18.5 million KWh per year.
In 2017, we completed our fifth comprehensive retro-commissioning initiative at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. At this property, a key focus was the optimization of the chilled water plant that delivers cool water throughout the building.
Together with hardware upgrades and advanced control strategies, Caesars Palace now controls indoor temperature and humidity conditions with much lower energy use, consistently throughout the year, irrespective of external weather conditions.
In 2016, we completed standardization of our maintenance management processes using an electronic platform called Maximo to manage engineering across the organization. Maximo enables us to track work flows across each property in real time, help identify inefficiencies and plan corrective and preventive maintenance of equipment and infrastructure that are not working optimally. In a given month, Maximo processes more than 100,000 work orders, providing us with opportunities to correct and improve not only operations and maintenance, but also energy performance.
For example, Caesars Palace has nearly 4,000 hotel rooms, several dining and recreation areas, and more than 150,000 light bulbs. Even though guestroom lighting at Caesars had been upgraded over the years, we noticed that lighting was among the most frequent issues highlighted through Maximo. In particular, older fluorescent lamps in hotel rooms were producing extreme differences in light color and emitting lower levels of light. In addition, they often took many minutes to reach full light output creating a poor guest experience. We therefore initiated a large-scale replacement of light bulbs and fixtures in Caesars Palace, installing LED technology at an investment of more than $420,000. Not only did this mean that our guests could now see the light, we significantly reduced energy consumption and streamlined maintenance requirements.
Reducing energy consumption is a key element of our CodeGreen strategy to practice comprehensive environmental stewardship through ongoing energy efficiency projects. In the last decade, we have invested in more than 180 major energy efficiency initiatives. From 2007 to 2016, Caesars Entertainment’s U.S. and international operations reduced energy consumption (fossil fuel based) per square foot by 21 percent.
