Wequasett Inn and Resort

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The Wequasett Inn and Resort in Chatham, MA is undergoing renovation and construction. New buildings are being built to accommodate more guests, and older buildings are being remodeled and redesigned. As part of this process, the Wequasett is partnering with the Cape Light Compact to install energy-saving occupancy sensors in many of its rooms. Through a contract with RISE Engineering, the Wequasett is implementing this energy-saving technology in hopes of saving on heating and cooling costs. The sensors conserve energy by detecting whether a room is currently occupied and adjusting the temperature settings for the room accordingly--reducing air conditioning in the summer when guests are at the beach for the day, or reducing heating in the winter when guests decide to venture to one of Cape Cod's restaurants for the evening. The sensors will reduce energy usage associated with operating the air conditioning and heating units in the rooms, and thereby conserve the natural resources used to power them. The Cape Light Compact provides a financial incentive for the installation of such measures to help encourage conservation and efficiency.

The sensors are based on both motion in the room and the opening and closing of the room's exterior doors. Magnetic sensors are installed on all the doors, which communicate with the electronic thermostat, indicating when a door is opened or closed. When a door is opened or closed, the motion sensor is activated, and upon detecting the presence of a person, automatically resets the heating or air conditioning to the setting the person last used. If the sensor does not detect a person--perhaps because the door was opened as someone was leaving--it will, after 8 minutes of searching, change the heating or air conditioning to an energy-saving setting. The sensor also tries to prevent mistakes as to whether a person is in the room by using the motion sensor. If motion is detected when the thermostat was configured to its "unoccupied" settings, the guest's previous setting is restored. In addition, if the room is detected to be unoccupied for a prolonged period--for instance, because the room hasn't been sold--the sensor will automatically reduce the energy consumption of the heating and air conditioning unit even further. The temperature settings for the "occupied," "unoccupied" and "unsold" are given in the chart to the left. These ranges reflect the temperature settings for the rooms in summer and winter, respectively.

Through their partnership with the Cape Light Compact, the Wequasett Inn was able to take advantage of financial incentives and implement a simple technology that will help them conserve energy and save money. The Inn hopes to pursue further opportunities in the future to outfit its new buildings with energy-efficient technologies and to expand its occupancy sensor project to include controls for lighting.