Began operation in late 2006, the Ana Mandara resort is located on the campus of 14 hectares of Dalat plateau. Ana Mandara is strongly influenced by old French architecture with 17 villas including 65 rooms, restaurant and spa.

With the criteria of nature friendly, environment protection, the management is always interested in energy saving. With specific activities, Ana Mandara not only affirmed their brand of becoming a "green" resort, with international quality but also every year economic benefits from energy saving measures, environmental protection are also very large. 

The first impression to anyone visiting the Ana Mandara is a green, open space and proximity. From here visitors can freely enjoy the panorama around, watching the countryside, or rich vegetable fields with endless green color.

Taking advantage of hilly location, water tanks are placed highly to let the water flow down to the below area for irrigation, not only saving a lot of fuel like oil, electricity to run the engine but also ensuring the quietness for the resort. For the areas using fuel such as the hot water swimming pool, Zico fuel pump was used to replace the petro-run boiler. After 8 months, it has reduced more than 60% of fuel cost. In the future, the source of cold air radiating from the operation of the Zico machine will be used to preserve facilities that need keeping cool. 

In particular, to save energy for heating the pool, in the off-peak hours, heat pump system is used. Trees around the lake are always cleaned to help the water easily get direct sunlight on the lake during the day, increasing water temperatures in the lake from 1-2oC. At night, the lake was covered with large canvas to help reduce heat loss. 

Previously, every day the resort had to spend 35-40 liters of DO for heating the water furnace to heat the water up to the suitable temperature. With water heating system using heat pump, operating cost was declined substantially from VND600 -700,000/day to approximately VND80-90,000/day. With these solutions, each year the pool area helps Ana Mandara save about VND219 million.

Lighting system of Ana Mandara is designed to maximize natural light. On the basis of French architecture, the buildings are all airy with many windows; almost no need to use electric lighting ad brings peace experience of mind for travelers. In addition, all incandescent bulbs in the resort have been replaced with energy saving compact bulbs with a capacity of 7W-10W and still guaranteed lighting when necessary.

In outer space, lighting systems automatically switch on and off in accordance with relaxation hours of guests. With the above improvement as well as using time management, the outdoor lighting system helps save power of 49.158 kWh / year.

With resort and restaurant business as Ana Mandara, the laundry activities constitute a large amount of energy costs, about 25% of the total power consumption. The first measure to reduce power consumption in this area is to change operations period from multiple times per day to low peak hours. Power saving efficiency is significant, estimated to save VND180 million per year. 

Not only save electricity, the laundry staff is always conscious of water saving.  Ana Mandara leadership invested in a sewage disposal plant to reuse this water source for landscaping, cleaning public areas. The sewage treatment system is constructed at a cost of VND4 billion, with a measuring table of data on the cleanliness of the treated water for convenience in all activities. This system only works 14 hours per day but still ensures all water standards. 

According to calculations, the installation of the air pump operating time, avoiding rush hours saved almost 14 thousand kwh per year. The amount of washing sewage after treatment for irrigation of the entire resort saved about 14,600 m3/year. 

Participating in the competition "Energy Efficiency Building and Energy Management System ASEAN 2010," Ana Mandara Resort, Da Lat has achieved "Tropical Building", brought honor to the host country Vietnam. Mr. Vo said that to ensure effective business together with sustainable development is the trend of many businesses. Following this direction, Ana Mandara has contributed to enrich the environment and become a friendly destination in the mind of many tourists. 

Propaganda to raise the awareness of energy saving to the staff is always of interest to the leadership of Ana Mandara. Mr. Ngoc Hoang Nguyen, restaurant employees said, all employees are highly aware of energy saving, saving electricity, saving water means saving the cost and labor.

Together with Ana Mandara Dalat, Vietnam this year achieved many prizes.

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"With the results above, we will further study energy saving and efficiency and apply to all areas using energy at the resort. Especially, we're considering and preparing to install water heater systems using heat pumps instead of indirect water heaters being used with a target of saving about 70,000 kWh / year," said Nguyen Van Vo, Director of Ana Mandara Dalat

By Phuong Anh