What is the Peak-Hour Playbook?
The Peak-Hour Playbook is Jaken Energy’s method for assigning safe, measurable hotel operating actions to the time windows that affect demand-related costs. It connects tariff or market rules to actual equipment, staffing, guest-service constraints, and post-event review.
The playbook begins with the relevant measurement window, not a generic instruction to reduce use in the afternoon. A utility demand charge and a regional coincident-peak obligation can use different periods and calculations. Identify which one the hotel is trying to influence before assigning actions.
Use the bills guide to establish measured versus billed demand, and the markets guide for the regional context. This operating framework does not predict system peaks or claim that a particular action will lower every demand-related component.
Which cost signal is the hotel responding to?
Define the cost and rule precisely. For monthly billing demand, review the interval, applicable hours, ratchet, and minimum. For a capacity or transmission obligation, obtain the account method and relevant historical or future peak requirements from the utility or supplier.
The DOE rate-options guidance explains the different ways tariffs can charge for consumption and demand. A hotel should use the actual tariff to decide which intervals matter. A system alert can be relevant to one component while having no effect on a separate already-established billing floor.
Read the retail agreement as well. If a component is included in a fixed product, operational changes may not immediately change the hotel’s supplier invoice even if they affect an underlying obligation. Ask how changes are recognized, what year they affect, and whether the account benefits under the executed product.
How do you find controllable overlap?
Compare interval data with equipment and event schedules. Look for simultaneous laundry starts, cooling recovery, kitchen preparation, water heating, pool operation, and charger activity. The point is to identify a feasible scheduling change, not to declare every load discretionary.
Ask engineering whether the observed peak is repeatable and whether the dataset is complete. Check meter time zone and daylight-saving treatment before aligning equipment events. An hour-offset mistake can direct attention to the wrong operating shift.
The DOE building-controls resource provides context for sensors and coordinated operation. Installed controls still need tested sequences, overrides, and safe limits. A system that cannot reliably identify its operating state should not receive an unreviewed automatic curtailment command.
What makes an action safe and operationally useful?
Specify the equipment, maximum duration, responsible person, and conditions that cancel the action. Guest comfort, humidity, linen availability, food service, safety, and water-treatment requirements constrain what can be shifted or reduced.
| Action candidate | Required check | Exit condition |
|---|---|---|
| Stagger selected laundry starts | Linen demand and cycle timing | Housekeeping shortage or urgent demand |
| Review cooling equipment overlap | Comfort and equipment operating limits | Unsafe or unacceptable room conditions |
| Limit combined EV charging power | Charger capability and guest commitments | Required charging service exception |
| Shift a discretionary maintenance task | Work safety and scheduling flexibility | Urgent repair or system need |
| Adjust approved common-area settings | Occupied conditions and humidity | Comfort or ventilation exception |
These are candidates for review, not universal recommendations. Leave life-safety equipment and required environmental controls outside discretionary actions. Have qualified staff establish actual limits, and make overrides easy to perform and document.
How should the event procedure work?
Create a procedure that can be run by the shift team. The person reading a peak notice may not be the person who designed the plan. An accessible action register reduces improvisation during a busy operating day.
- Confirm the target cost signal and applicable time window.
- Check staffing, occupancy, weather, and equipment availability.
- Authorize only the actions approved for current conditions.
- Log start time, equipment state, and any overrides.
- Restore normal operation using the tested recovery sequence.
- Review meter evidence, comfort, and operational effects.
- Update actions that were ineffective or impractical.
Do not restore every deferred load simultaneously if doing so creates another peak. Plan recovery as part of the event, including which systems restart first. A demand-management action that merely moves the peak to the next interval may provide no monthly demand benefit.
How should an illustrative benefit be calculated?
Calculate only the charge the action can change. Assume for illustration that tariff billing demand would fall from 248 kW to 229 kW and the relevant demand rate is $16/kW. The difference is 19 kW, giving an illustrative component change of 19 × $16 = $304 for that billing period.
This result assumes the lower demand actually sets the billed quantity and no ratchet or minimum replaces it. It also excludes costs of implementation and any changes to energy use. The rate and demand values are hypothetical; they are not a current tariff or demonstrated hotel outcome.
For a coincident-peak component, use the applicable tag calculation, units, adjustments, and service year. Do not apply the same $304 example to a regional capacity charge. The contract guide explains why the supplier product’s treatment also matters to the hotel’s realized cost.
How does formal demand response differ?
A demand-response program can impose defined performance, measurement, notification, and settlement conditions. An internal operating plan is not automatically a program commitment, and a capacity estimate is not automatically program revenue.
The DOE demand-response resource describes program and rate structures. Obtain the actual offer, baseline method, event obligations, exclusions, and consequences before enrollment. A hotel must be able to deliver the promised behavior during realistic guest and staffing conditions.
Model program payments and risks separately from utility demand savings. Check whether the same action can support both and whether any participation rules restrict combining arrangements. Supplier or aggregator compensation should be disclosed alongside the program economics; the hotel needs to understand the net arrangement.
What should the monthly review change?
Review metered results and operating consequences rather than count the number of alerts followed. A shift team may execute every action correctly while the relevant peak occurs outside the assumed window. That result calls for a better targeting method, not an accusation of failed effort.
Keep successful actions in a trained operating sequence and remove unsafe or impractical ones. Update the plan after equipment replacement, occupancy pattern changes, or charger expansion. Use the efficiency guide to coordinate those projects with the playbook.
Finally, retain the tariff or program rule version used for the plan. When rules change, revalidate the target and calculation. Peak management is useful only when the hotel’s actual operating actions connect to the charges and commitments that apply to its account.
How should a new shift team learn the playbook?
Train with a realistic walkthrough before expecting staff to respond to an alert. Have the team identify the equipment, authorization, safe limits, communication route, and restoration sequence. Include a scenario in which an action must be canceled because guest or operating conditions have changed.
Keep the approved procedure where the engineer on duty can access it and document revisions after equipment or staffing changes. An alert forwarded to an old employee’s inbox is not a reliable operating control. Assign a primary and backup recipient, confirm that the notification route works, and record the person who can authorize each action. Review training after a missed event or repeated override, using the evidence to improve feasibility rather than merely repeat an instruction that staff cannot safely execute.