Utility-Submetering: First step to improve Energy Management of your building
Recent adoption of utility submeters has enabled multi-use building owners and property managers fairly bill each occupant for energy consumption and improve the efficiency of their building operations with value added data. This provides transparency and gives tenants the incentive to make changes to their own behavioral consumption, save money and conserve resources. Submetering solutions have existed for a while now for at least 40 years. However, the adoption of the technology has been faster in Europe compared to North America (Construction Links Network).
Many buildings have a single central bulk meter installed for all types of utility consumption: electricity, water, propane/gas. This implies that all utilities bills are included in rents and the tenants share energy costs equally or according to unit floor size (square footage). The challenge with this is some tenants become responsible for paying the bills for energy consumed by others and this is not a fair billing policy. For those tenants that want to reduce their consumption and save on utility expenses, inadvertently are absorbing the costs of other tenants in their building that may have higher energy consumption patterns and behaviors.
Utility cost is one of the highest expenditures for buildings and impacts operating costs over time if nothing is done about it, especially with identifying the behaviors contributing to the rising costs. By investing in submetering solutions building owners and tenants have transparency to manage consumption.
By empowering yourself and tenants with transparent solutions to manage consumption, this results in cost cutting and you are freed from taking on high utility bills while tenants are responsible for their consumption. With regular monthly savings from utility bills, operation and management cost of buildings decline over time resulting in increased return on investment for owners.
A switch from bulk metering to submetering results in reduced energy consumption of up to 40% as residents now pay more attention to individual energy use and become more conservative (National Science and Technology Council). Hanatech IoT Utility submetering solutions are cost effective and have a promising return on investment, improves energy efficiency of building operations, reduces wasted consumption and fairly allocates utility costs and reduces energy consumption. Learn about Hanatech’s utility submetering.