Burning issue
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Game changer in tenant billing
Matt Gardner, business development manager at Synapsys Solutions, explains how the Heat Network (Metering & Billing) Regulations 2014 opened the door for automated billing and energy apportionment and how these can both be beneficial in achieving energy savings in the heating and ventilation sector
T
he introduction of mandatory metering in commercial buildings is perhaps one of the biggest game
changers in tenant billing that we have seen for a long time as they provide a means for people to make better informed decisions about improving energy efficiency and lowering expenditure. In fairness it is something that the industry has needed for many years, but it only became mandatory when the Heat Network (Metering & Billing) Regulations were introduced in 2014. The aim of the Regulations was primarily to implement some of the requirements of the EU’s 2012 Energy Efficiency Directive and required commercial and domestic property landlords of multi let properties where heating, cooling or hot water is supplied to tenants through a district or communal heating network to provide detailed information about those networks to a central body. One of the main requirements was for the heat supplier to install point of entry meters, which record the heat being delivered to a location for all buildings with one or more customers connected to a District Heat Network. The requirements of the Regulations have raised
awareness of smart billing, but at the same time they have also shown that as far as billing is concerned we have been living somewhat in the dark ages. In short it was time to change and the Regulations have essentially provided the catalyst.
An automated process
Unlike many changes which this industry has seen, the Heat Network (Metering & Billing) Regulations mean business, and with relatively few exemptions, and a range of both criminal and civil penalties for those failing to comply, they confirmed the requirement for an accurate billing process and as a result opened up the door for automated billing.
It may seem surprising, in this digital world, that automated billing is still a fairly new concept in commercial billings and that we have relied on manual data entry solutions for so long. But now that they are here the industry has grasped them
10 May 2018
with open arms and as a result, automated billing solutions are proving to be something of a revolution in the tenant billing process. This is largely because they join up the dots by accepting energy and utility consumption data from meter loggers or a monitoring system through a portal before automatically generating tenant bills which are sent via email – but we shouldn’t overlook the fact that they also enable the landlord to monitor energy usage in a manner which allows for accurate billing on a tenant by tenant basis. Another significant positive outcome is the availability of information to help the tenant understand and reduce their energy consumption through the tenant login functionality. This allows the tenant to continuously monitor their consumption and costs and compare their current usage against previous usage in their defined date ranges.
Not the end of the story
For an industry which has relied on manual data entry this is a significant change and for some building owners, landlords and indeed tenants, the automated process and access to intuitive displays which provide real time energy usage has been a game changer.
But now that the industry is on the journey there
is a renewed sense of hunger for more because many automated solutions have the ability to apportion energy use in shared use spaces within commercial buildings – thus taking it to the next
level. The concept of energy apportionment, whereby total energy usage in shared use spaces is disaggregated to attribute it to an individual occupant, is not a new thing. In fact, a manual version has been around for some time. The reason, however, that it is not widely used lies in the fact that the manual process has been neither quick nor easy and, in many cases, has been quite costly to perform. The requirements of the Heat Network (Metering & Billing) Regulations and the consequent widespread adoption of automated billing solutions has changed this. As a result, the ability to apportion energy based on actual usage is now easy with automated billing solutions, such as our own SIP Billing 2 which offers automated apportionment based on a number of complex calculations as standard. What this means is tenants can be charged fairly
for consumption of shared use services. In the past if there were two tenants occupying identical spaces in a building they would be billed the same amount through the service charge for shared use services – even if one of them operated on a 9-5 basis and one operated 24 hours a day. The specification of energy apportionment in a building will allow the industry to address this issue and as a result tenants will only be required to pay for the energy which they are actually using. In some cases, there will remain an element of
recharging of energy consumption for shared services through the service charge, particularly for electrical consumption, however an automated billing solution significantly reduces the amount of time and costs associated with this and more importantly increases the accuracy. The widespread adoption of automated billing solutions has proved to be a game changer for the industry. But now that we are on the journey it is clear that we can achieve more and what started as a requirement to comply with Regulations has quickly led us onto energy apportionment and more importantly, total visibility of costs. Only through this visibility can we really start to tackle our energy use and promote greater responsibility for energy reduction.
www.heatingandventilating.net
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