Grand Swiss-Belhotel Melaka: Digital Power Meters for EMS

About Grand Swiss-Belhotel Melaka

Grand Swiss-Belhotel Melaka sits on Jalan Hang Tuah, minutes from the UNESCO-listed heritage core and Jonker Street. It is a 4-star property of 211 rooms with two restaurants, function space, a pool and a gym, and it is best known architecturally for what the hotel describes as Malaysia's largest stained glass dome.

None of that switches off. A hotel is one of the few building types that runs a meaningful electrical load at 3am, and its energy profile is set less by floor area than by occupancy, kitchen schedules and function bookings.

The challenge: the function hall bills for the room, not the power

Start with the commercial problem, because it is the one that made this project happen.

When the hotel rents out its function hall, the rate covers the space. The electricity does not move with it. A full-day conference with the hall at capacity, air handling running hard from early setup to late teardown, staging and lighting loaded in by the client, costs the hotel dramatically more to run than a half-day meeting in the same room. On a single incoming meter, both events look identical. The hotel absorbs the difference.

The team wanted to change that: meter the function space properly, see what an event actually consumes, and recover it from the client on the basis of real energy used rather than a flat assumption baked into the rental rate.

The second driver is a chiller replacement. A new chiller was scheduled for installation, and the hotel wanted evidence of what it delivered. That evidence has a short shelf life. Once the old machine is gone, the opportunity to measure it is gone with it.

Behind both sits the ordinary problem. Under the RP4 tariff structure in force since 1 July 2025, the demand component of a Malaysian commercial bill is charged through Capacity and Network charges, currently RM89.27 and RM97.06 per kW for the relevant medium-voltage categories, and is set by the single highest half-hour peak in the month. One bad half hour prices the whole month, and a monthly total tells you nothing about which half hour it was, or what was running in it.

Phase 1: what Cobler installed

Cobler is delivering the project with Cape Renewables Sdn Bhd. Phase 1 covers two things: the network communication layer that carries data into CobiNeural, and the digital power meters (DPMs) that feed it for both energy management and billing.

Six metering points, chosen to answer specific questions rather than to fill a schedule:

- Phase 1 main incoming, which establishes a verifiable total that reconciles against the TNB bill. Sub-metering that does not reconcile to the invoice gets ignored the first time someone checks it.
- Phase 1 chiller 1 and Phase 2 chiller 2, the two largest single loads in the building and the ones that decide the shape of the demand curve.
- Phase 1 AHU and Phase 2 FCU and lighting DB, which together cover the air handling and lighting distribution serving the let spaces. This is what makes event-level billing possible: the consumption attributable to a function is the consumption of the plant conditioning and lighting it.

The metering craft matters more than the meter list. CT ratios were sized against measured running current rather than breaker rating, because a current transformer specified off the breaker frame spends its life in the bottom of its accuracy band and turns the overnight baseline into noise. The meters run Modbus RTU over RS-485 to a gateway, and switchroom work is staged around the hotel's operating hours so board shutdowns never reach a guest floor or a live function.

Implementation is scheduled for completion in October 2026.

The most important decision on this job was a sequencing one

Not a technical choice. A timing one: install the meters before the new chiller, or after?

It is a fair question, and on a live hotel with a plant replacement in the same window there are real arguments for doing the metering last, when the mechanical work is finished and the switchroom is settled. Getting it wrong in the other direction costs nothing you can see at the time, which is precisely what makes it dangerous.

The project aligned on metering first, and the reason is measurement and verification. If the DPMs go in after the new chiller is running, there is no baseline. You are left comparing the new plant against old utility bills shaped by different weather, different occupancy and a different function calendar, which is not a comparison at all. Meter first and you get a real before-and-after on the same instruments, at the same points, through the same platform. The chiller's performance becomes a measured figure instead of a claim.

The wider lesson is worth stating plainly, because this comes up on almost every retrofit: metering is not the last trade on a plant upgrade, it is the first. Any project replacing significant equipment should agree the sequence at kickoff, in writing, with every party working from the same programme. The baseline window opens once and does not reopen.

What the metering gives the hotel

- Billing & Tariffs turns function-hall consumption into a line a client can be charged for, so the hotel recovers energy on actual use rather than absorbing the variance between a light booking and a heavy one.
- Insights → Energy tracks consumption, power factor and the Max Demand KPI at location and equipment level, at interval resolution. That is what turns a total into a load profile: the overnight baseline, the morning ramp, and the shape of a peak while it is still forming rather than after it is billed.
- Comparison across like days is where the pattern work happens. A full Saturday against a quiet Tuesday, one function against another in the same room, this month's chiller profile against last month's.
- Plan & Verify carries the chiller before-and-after as a documented M&V exercise rather than an argument.
- Alerts pushes anomalies to the engineering team by WhatsApp or email, which is how a chiller left running against a closed function room gets caught the same day.
- Reporting produces scheduled, documented output for EECA-aligned reporting and ISO 50001 management review, from a record that is auditable by construction.

Where the project stands

Phase 1 is under way, with implementation scheduled for completion in October 2026. As boards are metered and brought onto the platform, the hotel moves from a single monthly number toward a live, sub-metered picture of its own consumption, with the chiller baseline captured before the new machine arrives and function-hall energy becoming a billable, evidenced figure.

Patterns first, then optimisation. A hotel cannot schedule around a peak it cannot see, and it cannot charge for energy it never measured.

See how other operators approach energy monitoring across their portfolios, or talk to us about metering your property.