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5 Benefits of Utility Submetering for Commercial Real Estate

Written by Katarzyna Kiebus | Dec 4, 2024 10:39:33 AM

Energy resource management is becoming increasingly significant since the cost of energy has become an important component in the overall volume of the society's economy. Energy management is making better use of given energy supplies while incurring the fewest additional expenditures and improving sustainability.



In this situation, submetering seems justified because it provides the capability to track the energy consumption of individual tenants, departments, specific equipment, or other loads in order to accurately assess their actual energy usage. To illustrate, a main meter would reveal the total electricity consumption of an entire building, whereas submetering reveals the electricity consumption of an individual space. 

Now, let's explore the five advantages of implementing submetering. 

1. Optimized energy performance

Submetering enables users to closely monitor individual equipment, enabling the allocation of energy costs to various departments and processes. This data empowers building managers to identify who consumes the most energy and where it is primarily utilized, facilitating corrective actions.

2. Fair multi-tenantbilling

Submeters enable precise tenant billing. This eliminates unfair cost distribution and guesswork about power consumption consequences. 

Submetering systems provide real-time, accurate power usage measurements, enabling instant data processing. As a result, management can bill tenants accurately for their monthly usage and share real-time consumption information, making them an attractive option for renters seeking cost-effective housing solutions.

An example is GLP, where such a solution promotes lower media consumption, reduced carbon footprint, greater biodiversity, and better employee health.

3. Quickly diagnose problems

With submeters in place, you can promptly pinpoint and understand the reasons behind fluctuations in consumption rates over days, weeks, or months, even if tenant usage remains consistent.
This proactive approach enables you to address and rectify issues before they escalate, leading to significant cost reductions in building operations.

4. More useful data

Submetering offers the clear advantage of providing real-time energy data, enabling a precise understanding of where and why excessive energy is being used, which is the initial step in consumption reduction.

In submetering - especially in the case of shopping centers, office buildings, and warehouse halls - it is essential to be able to understand the operation of the building, which information on how much and when individual building systems consume a given medium. It provides the necessary input to optimize the operation of BMS and HVAC. At the same time, it is crucial in the context of making decisions regarding ESG investments. If you have submetering, you know exactly how much a given building system consumes, so you also see the cost of this consumption. You can assess whether, for example, changing some devices will be profitable because this consumption is significant or not.

In turn, in the production area - submetering enables the monitoring of media consumption throughout the entire production process by individual production lines or machines. It provides the basis for optimizing production by leveling the so-called consumption profile and allows you to determine the utility costs needed to produce individual elements/products.
In Rhino, clients have access to one-click reporting is a universal solution that allows reading data to be exported to any billing program, making it ideal for professionals who want to speed up their work. Moreover, the aggregated data can be made available to external systems via API.

5. Sustainability

Submetering offers numerous advantages, primarily centered around optimizing property management strategies. However, there's an often overlooked environmental benefit as well. To promote environmental sustainability effectively, leveraging data for informed energy decisions is essential, leading to reduced pollution.

Submeters are essential components in renewable energy initiatives such as solar power generation. In a solar array connected to the grid, surplus electricity is returned to the grid. The use of a two-way submeter, capable of measuring the energy moving both to and from the solar installation, enables the calculation of the amount the utility should reimburse the property for.

 

Comprehending your energy usage represents the initial stride toward fostering sustainability. Once you can pinpoint the sectors consuming the most energy, you can then delve into the reasons behind it, and this is where sub-metering becomes valuable. 

Take the first step towards energy efficiency by showing where energy is lost and where it can be saved and contact us at sales@rhino.energy.