GridBit OccuSense controls the energy of a hotel by the real occupancy of its rooms. Presence sensors tell the platform which rooms are in use, automation sets the climate of each room to match, and the evidence for the EPBD requirements builds up along the way.
Why
Guests leave the air conditioning and the lights on when they go out. The room is conditioned for hours with nobody in it.
A classic building management system needs new cabling, chased walls and rooms taken out of sale while the work goes on.
A plain motion sensor sees no movement at night and turns the climate off on a guest who is asleep.
Older air conditioners take commands from an infrared remote and never confirm that they obeyed.
Occupancy reality check
The property management system shows 18 rooms as occupied. Tonight guests are in 12 of them. The air conditioning runs in the other six as well, and you pay for it every night.
18 rooms booked, 18 rooms conditioned.12 rooms in use. Six are conditioned for nobody.The six empty rooms go to eco mode until the guest returns.
The example from the OccuSense brochure, not measured data.
How it works
Three small devices do the work: a sensor on the ceiling, an actuator at the air conditioner and a gateway in the corridor. They talk by radio, so no wall is opened and no new cable is pulled.
01Ceiling sensor
The sensor combines three methods. A passive infrared element wakes it at the first movement. A millimetre-wave radar picks up movements as small as breathing. A CO₂ sensor confirms that someone is in the room during deep sleep. It has no camera and no microphone.
02Actuator
The actuator sits at the indoor unit and runs on mains power. It receives the presence signal over a short radio link inside the room. It commands the unit by infrared, like the remote control, or through a relay. A current clamp and a temperature probe tell it whether the unit really did what it was told.
03Gateway
The actuators reach a gateway in the corridor over sub-GHz radio at 868 MHz, which passes through hotel walls. A small hotel can work with a single gateway. It connects to the platform over Ethernet with MQTT over TLS and can exchange data with an existing BMS over Modbus or BACnet.
04Decision
The room is in use: the climate goes to comfort. The room has been empty for a while: it goes to eco. The rules are yours, and a test mode replays them on past data before they touch a real room. When a guest takes manual control, the scenario steps back.
05Platform
The data goes to the GridBit platform, hosted in the EU. It opens in a browser, on a phone as well, and shows rooms, energy, comfort and equipment together.
Installation
Every device carries an NFC tag and a QR code with its unique identifier. Pairing takes a tap of the phone, so nobody types serial numbers and nobody mixes up the rooms. The target is under an hour per room.
Each device arrives with a passive NFC tag and a QR code.
The technician mounts the sensor and the actuator in the room.
They pick the room in the app and tap the phone on each device.
The platform maps the devices to the room and sends the table to the gateway.
The platform
The daily cockpit: rooms in use by the sensors against rooms reserved in the PMS, with the mismatch spelled out. Next to it the consumption of the day, the comfort category and the alerts, ranked by daily cost.
Floor by floor, as a blueprint or a generated grid, with one overlay at a time: occupancy, comfort, energy or device health. A room with an anomaly gets a pulsing outline.
Energy and occupancy share one chart, so an empty room that still consumes stands out. Below it temperature, humidity and CO₂ against the alarm thresholds. Manual control is one button and goes to the audit log.
The month with a forecast, compared with last year after degree-day normalisation, and the split by consumers. The phantom load detector names the stand-by sources, here stand-by HVAC in rooms 401 to 408.
Chillers, heat pumps and air handling units with COP, supply and return temperature, power and cycles per day. A chiller that short-cycles shows up in red long before it fails.
Screens from the interface design, with sample data.
The platform
The daily cockpit: rooms in use by the sensors against rooms reserved in the PMS, with the mismatch spelled out. Next to it the consumption of the day, the comfort category and the alerts, ranked by daily cost.
Floor by floor, as a blueprint or a generated grid, with one overlay at a time: occupancy, comfort, energy or device health. A room with an anomaly gets a pulsing outline.
Energy and occupancy share one chart, so an empty room that still consumes stands out. Below it temperature, humidity and CO₂ against the alarm thresholds. Manual control is one button and goes to the audit log.
The month with a forecast, compared with last year after degree-day normalisation, and the split by consumers. The phantom load detector names the stand-by sources, here stand-by HVAC in rooms 401 to 408.
Chillers, heat pumps and air handling units with COP, supply and return temperature, power and cycles per day. A chiller that short-cycles shows up in red long before it fails.
Screens from the interface design, with sample data.
Savings
Move the sliders. The model multiplies the energy saved per occupied room per day by your rooms and your occupancy. It is an estimate: the pilot replaces it with numbers measured in your building.
Energy saved per year
208,050kWh
HVAC 175,200 kWhLighting 32,850 kWh
Assumptions of the model: 8 kWh of HVAC and 1.5 kWh of lighting saved per occupied room per day, 0.40 kg of CO₂ per kWh. Change them to match your building.
EPBD
The recast Energy Performance of Buildings Directive has been in force since 2024, and the member states write it into national law through 2026. It brings requirements for building automation, indoor air quality, the Smart Readiness Indicator and minimum energy performance towards 2030. OccuSense tracks all four from the same data it uses to run the rooms.
BACS
The efficiency of the equipment, such as the COP of chillers and heat pumps, and anomalies like heating and cooling in the same zone. The result is a structured evidence pack.
IEQ
Temperature, humidity, CO₂ and fine particles per zone, rated by the categories of EN 16798-1. A public display in the lobby shows guests the air they breathe.
SRI
The score follows the EU method across nine domains. A simulation shows how many points a new service would add before you invest in it.
MEPS
Energy per square metre after degree-day normalisation, the trajectory of the energy class towards 2030 and the CO₂ footprint by the emission factor of the grid.
The external auditor gets secure, time-limited, read-only access, and every visit is written to the audit log.
Modules
The daily cockpit: spend, real occupancy against the PMS and alerts by priority. "Is there anything to handle today?", answered in a minute.
Consumption breakdown, phantom load detector and a simulator of the night setback.
A visual builder of scenarios with ready hotel templates and a test mode.
A comfort heatmap by zones and a public air quality display for the lobby.
BACS, SRI, MEPS and carbon: dashboards, history and reports.
State of chillers and heat pumps, COP trend and predictive maintenance.
For real hotels
Guest privacy
No cameras, no microphones, no identity. The system knows only that a room is in use, never who is in it. Hosting in the EU, in line with GDPR.
Installation without disruption
The pilot starts on a single floor after a survey on site. All other rooms keep working as usual.
Your equipment
The survey defines the integrations with your HVAC, BMS and PMS. The platform also works without a PMS.
Comfort stays first
You control the rules. A guest who takes manual control always wins over the scenario.
Pilot
We install on one floor or wing and measure. You commit to the whole property only after you have seen the report.
Request a pilotWe walk the site and agree on the floor or wing, the HVAC and BMS integration and whether a PMS takes part.
The devices go in room by room. The rest of the hotel works as usual.
Real occupancy, HVAC waste, air quality and the effect of automation, before and after.
A report in kWh: the savings, the mismatch between occupancy and PMS, and a recommendation for the roll-out.
Why GridBit
GatewayGWU-54G LTE gateway for Modbus devices, with Ethernet and MQTT4G LTE Cat 1Mobile network, 2G fallbackRS485 + EthernetModbus RTU and Modbus TCP
MeterMCU-4Three-phase network analyser with Modbus RTU3P+N / 1P+NPole configurationU, I, P, cos φ, EMeasured parameters
InputsSMU-3Eight-channel AC voltage detector with Modbus RTU8Voltage detection inputs280 VACMaximum input voltageGridBit OccuSense controls the energy of a hotel by the real occupancy of its rooms. Presence sensors tell the platform which rooms are in use, automation sets the climate of each room to match, and the evidence for the EPBD requirements builds up along the way.
No. The ceiling sensor has no camera and no microphone, and the system keeps no guest identities. It detects presence with a passive infrared element, a millimetre-wave radar and a CO₂ sensor.
It combines three methods. The millimetre-wave radar picks up movements as small as breathing, and the CO₂ sensor confirms that someone is in the room during deep sleep. A plain motion sensor would see no movement at night and turn the climate off.
No. The sensor, the actuator and the floor gateway talk by radio, so no wall is opened and no new cable is pulled. The devices go in room by room while the hotel works, each one paired with a tap of the phone on its NFC tag. The target is under an hour per room.
Yes. The actuator commands the indoor unit by infrared, like the remote control, or through a relay. A current clamp and a temperature probe tell it whether the unit really did what it was told.
No. OccuSense works with or without a PMS. With a PMS, the platform compares the rooms that are booked with the rooms that are really in use and shows the mismatch.
It tracks four EPBD topics from the same data it uses to run the rooms: building automation and control systems (BACS), indoor air quality, the Smart Readiness Indicator (SRI) and the minimum energy performance standards towards 2030.
With a pilot on one floor or wing. GridBit surveys the site, installs room by room and measures real occupancy, HVAC waste, air quality and the effect of automation. You get a report in kWh and commit to the whole property only after you have seen it. The target is at least 15 % lower HVAC consumption, proven on your own data.
Tell us about the hotel: rooms, floors, the type of air conditioning and whether you use a PMS. We answer with a plan for the survey.
