How Hotels can save with Community Solar
Overview: Hotels face rising electricity costs but can’t compromise guest comfort, making many traditional energy solutions costly, disruptive, or impractical to implement. Community solar offers hotels a simple, no-upfront-cost way to reduce electric bills by 10–15% without onsite installation, operational disruption, or long project timelines.
Hotels don’t have the luxury of choosing between comfort and cost. Cold air conditioning, hot showers, and laundry running around the clock are all critical to delivering a great guest experience but also mean ever-increasing electricity costs.
This situation has become increasingly difficult over the last several years, where volatile occupancy swings, rising utility rates, and increasing electricity demand have made it harder for hotel operators to reign in electricity bills. While traditional energy solutions introduce tradeoffs that serve as barriers to adoption, community solar offers hotel operators a different approach.
In today’s Deep Dive, we’re focusing on how community solar may be the easiest decision you make this year to cut electricity costs, leading to simple and dependable savings.
Why Traditional Energy Solutions Fall Short for Hotels
Energy Efficiency Upgrades
Pros: Reduces Consumption Directly
Cons: Capital Intensive, Requires Onsite Installation
For many businesses, the first instinct to lower electricity costs is to reduce usage, which naturally points toward energy efficiency upgrades. While logical, these upgrades are often far more complex to implement than they appear. Energy Efficiency projects often require access to guest rooms or major equipment upgrades, which can disrupt occupied spaces and affect the guest experience. Since hotels depend on high occupancy, consistent comfort, and positive reviews to drive revenue, even temporary disruptions can carry real financial risk. Past these operational limitations, access to funds and competing investment priorities could make energy efficiency upgrades go from difficult-to-pursue, to now impossible.
Onsite Solar Systems:
Pros: Generates energy onsite, strong/visible commitment to sustainability
Cons: Capital Intensive, Requires Installation, Regularly >1 year from contracting to operation
Onsite solar systems can also be a good solution in very specific cases but unfortunately are not feasible for many hotel properties. Limited roof space, lease arrangement limitations, and brand requirements can all restrict a hotel’s ability to install panels on the facility that they operate daily. Even when these barriers can be overcome, these projects regularly take over 1 year to go from contracting to construction, meaning your business may have to wait even longer to see savings on your electric bill
As a result, while energy efficiency improvements and onsite solar do have the potential to reduce electricity usage in the right circumstances, they often do not align with the operational realities, timelines, or risk tolerance of many hotel owners and operators.
Why Community Solar may be the best fit for your hotel:
Community solar is an easy to adopt strategy to gain control over your electric bill without disrupting operations with an onsite installation or dedicating your own capital.
Community Solar
Pros: No upfront costs to participate, No Install Onsite, Typical Savings between 10 to 15%
Cons: Only available in certain states (IL, MD, ME, NY, NM, etc)
Community solar systems seek to partner with electric customers within the same utility territory. As part of the partnership, your business receives bill credits for a share of the solar project’s monthly generation.
The major benefit in this structure? Your ability to save with Community Solar no longer has anything to do with how much roof space your building has, how much capital you have to spend, or how long your lease may be. Instead, it’s all dependent on how much community solar you subscribe to, which can be optimized with ease by our team at Turquoise Trail. Currently, these programs are only available in certain states but this is changing rapidly as many states continue to adopt community solar legislation.
How do I know what Community solar can do for my business?
While community solar for hotels is simple to use once enrolled, knowing how to get started can sometimes feel overwhelming. Turquoise Trail Energy Solutions helps hotel owners and operators navigate the community solar process from start to finish by evaluating eligibility, estimating potential electricity savings, and providing clear, personalized guidance.
If community solar is a good fit for your business, we work with pre-vetted, industry leading community solar partners to ensure a smooth enrollment process with the leading options in the market. If you’re interested in learning how your hotel can take more control over your electricity expenses, reach out today by sharing a single electric bill!
