Cogenra Solar has announced a roof-top installation at the Hotel Real InterContinental in San Salvador, El Salvador. A part of the Real Hotels and Resorts/InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG), the five-star, 234-room resort is the world's first hotel to implement solar cogeneration technology, delivering heat and electricity on demand.

Working together with THINKnrg, a U.S. firm that implements on-site clean energy solutions in the U.S. and Latin America region, Cogenra Solar constructed the 122kW solar cogeneration system in about six weeks.

The 48-module SunPack installation will produce solar electricity and approximately 16,000 liters of hot water daily for showers, laundry, cleaning, and food-preparation. The installation serves as a pilot solar cogeneration system for IHG's Central America hotels as the company considers deploying multiple installations throughout the region.

"The San Salvador IHG installation and subsequent evaluation will facilitate wide-spread renewable energy deployment in Central America," said Dr. Gilad Almogy, CEO of Cogenra.

"The adoption of solar cogeneration in Central America is a testament to Cogenra's flexible design, architecture and capital-light manufacturing strategy, in which sub-assemblies from our vendors are shipped directly to our customer and integrated quickly on site. The strategy allows us to rapidly scale and reach new markets worldwide."

The system covers about 3,000 ft2 of roof space and is expected to offset approximately 24,000 kWh of electricity while decreasing the hotel's hot water fuel consumption by 120,000 kWh annually. In addition to lowering the hotel's energy bills, the solar cogeneration system will decrease greenhouse gas emissions by 174 tons of carbon dioxide each year.

"Currently, energy costs account for approximately 10 to 15 percent of all hotel expenses," said Dominique Gapany, Regional Director of Operations of Real Hotels and Resorts. "By implementing solar cogeneration, we will be able to reduce our energy expenses and help the environment by reducing our consumption of traditional energy sources and our greenhouse gas emissions."

Cogenra's solar cogeneration system tracks the sun, converting about 15 percent of the delivered energy to electricity, similar to other photovoltaic (PV) technology.

In addition to electricity production, Cogenra's technology captures the waste heat, dissipated by standard PV systems, utilizing it for various applications such as water heating, space heating and cooling. In total, solar cogeneration uses over 75 percent of the sun's incident energy - making this hybrid technology more efficient than a stand-alone PV or Solar Hot Water system.

While the solar cogeneration installation is InterContinental Hotels Group's first renewable energy initiative, the company has completed an LED lighting redesign, implemented an environment-friendly laundry technology at 19 of their locations and is constantly improving their energy, water, waste and supply chain practices to reduce their impact and carbon footprint.

This is Cogenra/THINKnrg's first hospitality application in San Salvador and represents the world's first solar cogeneration adoption at a five star hotel.

Solar cogeneration has been embraced by other environmental leaders, including Facebook, Kendall-Jackson Wine Estates, Clover Stornetta, Southern California Gas Company, Tucson Medical Center, the University of Arizona, and the Navy, Army and Marine branches of the U.S. Military. Cogenra's hybrid solar cogeneration technology is modular, scalable and simple, and offers returns in less than five years for a large majority of customers.