Happy Tenants, Happy Landlords: 4 Ways Submetering Your Building Will Improve Tenant Billing and More

Submeters are the key to an energy management systems (EMS). These small, easily-installed sensors provide detailed information about a building’s energy performance, area by area. EMS platforms like MACH can automate tenant billing based on the data retrieved from submeters. Like many features of EMS, the submeter-enabled tenant billing mechanism is an asset to owners and landlords as well as tenants. Here’s why:

1. It creates transparency for tenants.When tenants can see a breakdown of their monthly energy use, they can trust the accuracy and fairness of their bill. Submeters allow for an individual analysis of each tenant’s space, so each bill can be explained with a detailed breakdown of how much and when energy was consumed.
2. It enhances transparency for all stakeholders. EMS equips building management teams with reports detailing their progress towards sustainability goals, allowing ownership to demonstrate their commitment to corporate responsibility. MACH’s software generates reports that showcase energy savings and ENERGY STAR score improvements.
3. Automation saves time for landlords and property managers. MACH’s software platform features tenant billing that automates the process using the real-time data captured by the submeters. Property managers and landlords no longer have to pore over Excel spreadsheets and manually input rows upon rows of numbers. Instead, MACH’s program does the job itself, automating water, steam and energy bills for every tenant in the property. Now property managers and owners have more time for building tenant relationships, tackling special projects and focusing on important business decisions.
4. It encourages tenant engagement. If tenants can see the real-time data illustrating their energy expenses, then they can begin to make behavioral changes to lower their bills, thereby creating energy savings for the building overall. The most successful energy efficiency initiatives involve collaboration between landlords and tenants. ENERGY STAR reports that tenant engagement is the key to achieving energy efficiency goals. When they see the cold, hard data behind their energy use, tenants are motivated to make simple changes, such as minding plug loads and turning off lights, all of which can contribute to energy savings.

In addition to all these tenant-related benefits, submeters open building management teams up to a new wealth of building information that is made dynamic and versatile by the EMS platform. With real-time data provided by the submeters, EMS can accurately analyze the energy usage in each submetered space and hence paint a complete picture of the building performance, which leads to palpable energy savings. The real-time data assist the threshold alerting feature so building management or ownership can avoid costly demand spikes. MACH’s software also offers its unique “Initiatives” feature, where the software generates actionable reports with suggested cost-saving operational adjustments based on analytics from submeter data, real-time weather information, and benchmarks from comparable buildings.