Energy Sub-Metering: Everything You Need to Know

Managing energy efficiently is now crucial for organisations operating large buildings, campuses, or multiple sites as we shift in a world where sustainability is a must-have. To achieve effective energy management, having detailed insights into energy usage is key. Businesses must understand exactly where and how energy is consumed across their properties.

This is where energy sub-metering comes into play. Sub-metering allows you to monitor energy use at individual sites within your property. By using sub-metres and central energy management software, you can monitor energy consumption at different levels, track patterns, and find potential solutions to save on costs.

Let’s explore how sub-metering can benefit your business.

What is Energy Sub-Metering?

Energy sub-metering involves installing extra metres downstream of your main utility metre. These sub-metres allow you to monitor specific areas, equipment, or even individual tenants within a building. Unlike your primary utility metre, which tracks overall consumption, sub-meters provide a more detailed view of how electricity, gas, water, heating, and cooling are used.

With sub-meters, businesses can understand how different parts of their operation consume energy. This detailed information helps in understanding usage patterns and maintaining the health of various assets.

For example, by using sub-meters, you can track exactly how much energy is consumed on different floors of a building or by specific equipment like HVAC systems or lighting.

What Can Sub-Meters Measure?

Sub-meters can measure energy consumption in two ways:

• Location-based: You can monitor energy use in specific areas, such as different floors of a building. This is useful for landlords who want to charge tenants based on their energy use or for optimising heating and cooling across different zones.
• Energy load specific: Track energy use by specific systems (like lighting or air conditioning) to identify which processes are the most energy-intensive and where you can save.

Why is Sub-Metering Getting More Important?

As discussed, sub-metering is important to ensure efficient energy management and responsible consumption. There are numerous reasons why businesses and industries are emphasising sub-metering:

Cost, Water, and Carbon Savings:

Sub-metering data will help you reduce, shift, and control energy consumption more effectively. This can lead to significant savings on utility bills and lower carbon emissions. By understanding where and how energy is consumed, businesses can make smarter decisions that benefit both their bottom line and the environment.

Addressing the Building Performance Gap:

New buildings often use more energy than anticipated during the design phase. Sub-metering can help uncover the reasons behind this gap. It might reveal issues like poorly specified equipment or usage patterns that don’t align with actual occupancy. By pinpointing these discrepancies, businesses can take corrective actions to improve energy efficiency.

Supporting Capital Expenditure Projects:

When proposing new projects, finance directors require a solid business case. Sub-metering provides accurate data on energy consumption, which can be critical in getting a project approved. This data helps demonstrate the potential return on investment, making it easier to justify capital expenditure on energy-saving initiatives.

Ensuring Compliance:

Sub-metering also plays a role in meeting various compliance requirements:

• Heat Network Regulations: If you’re a landlord or agent providing heating, cooling, and hot water to multiple tenants from a central system, you may need to install heat metres.
• Reporting: Sub-metering is valuable for reporting under schemes like ESOS (Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme) and SECR (Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting). It can serve as evidence of your energy management efforts.
• Display Energy Certificates (DECs): Large public buildings are required to display DECs, which rate the building’s energy performance. Sub-metering provides the data needed to validate and implement energy-saving measures recommended in these certificates.

Benefits of Sub-Metering

Since 2014, new buildings over 1000 m² must have sub-meters that can be automatically read, covering at least 90% of the building’s energy use.

However, older buildings can also benefit from installing sub-meters. This can include warehouses, offices, retail spaces, leisure centres, and industrial sites.

Let’s see the top benefits of energy sub-metering:

Eco-Friendly Living

As we work towards a more sustainable future, achieving net zero emissions requires innovative and effective energy management techniques. One such technique is sub-metering, which plays a crucial role in identifying waste and inefficiency in energy usage. By pinpointing these areas, we can target and reduce unnecessary consumption, ultimately lessening our impact on the environment.

Energy sub-metering allows businesses to focus on energy-intensive areas that may be wasting money and operating inefficiently. The money saved from reducing overheads can be reinvested in other areas of the company or directed towards sustainability initiatives. With sub-metering, you gain visibility into when and how energy is consumed, providing key decision-makers with the data needed to identify inefficiencies and take action to curb waste.

Increased Energy Optimisation

Sub-metering goes beyond just identifying inefficiencies; it also tracks and verifies expected savings through ongoing performance monitoring. By installing metering devices throughout your sites and on specific equipment, you gain access to detailed monitoring and reporting. This empowers site managers to regain control over energy usage and ensure systems continue delivering successful results.

Smart energy management, powered by sub-metering, can help optimise your business’s performance by reducing overheads and increasing profit. By identifying areas of high energy usage, you get a clearer picture of where improvements can be made. Tailored energy solutions can then be implemented to meet your specific needs, helping to reduce carbon emissions, cut costs, and fast-track your business towards achieving net zero.

Helping Tenants Track Energy Use

Sub-metering also benefits tenants by providing insights into their energy consumption levels. With access to this data, tenants can see how their behaviour impacts their utility bills and make informed decisions to reduce energy usage. Simple adjustments, like reducing heating during off-peak hours, can lead to noticeable savings. If you don’t want to make these adjustments frequently and want smart energy management in your building, smart building solutions can help you automate many operations.

By sub-metering tenant spaces, you empower them to make efficient decisions that contribute to overall sustainability. These efforts not only make buildings more sustainable but also extend the lifespan of your equipment and machinery, leading to long-term benefits for everyone involved.

Common Applications of Energy Sub-Metering

As the need for efficient energy management rises in every sector and industry, we can see various use cases of sub-meters. Here are the most common applications of sub-meters in almost every industry:

Peak Demand Control

Managing electricity costs can be challenging, especially when it comes to peak demand charges. These charges occur when utility providers increase the cost per kilowatt-hour (kWh) during times of high electricity demand. The reason behind this is simple: utility companies need to ensure that the grid can handle the maximum power consumption of all their customers. To discourage excessive use during peak times, they raise prices during these periods.

This approach encourages consumers to shift their energy usage to off-peak hours when demand is lower, ultimately helping to prevent the grid from reaching its capacity. One effective tool for managing this is the use of sub-meters. These devices provide detailed information about electricity consumption, allowing users to adjust their usage patterns and take advantage of lower rates during off-peak hours.

Tenant Sub-Metering

In non-sub-metered commercial and residential buildings, tenants would typically be billed on square footage of rented space. In this scenario, the property owner receives an electrical bill for the entire facility and bills each tenant based on the amount of space they rent. The problem here is that tenants are not billed based on consumption behaviour, but rather, they are billed based on the total consumption of the rest of the tenants.

Tenant sub-metering allows each tenant to be billed only for the energy consumed within the rented space. MID-approved meters are accurate enough for billing purposes and can be installed at each tenant location. By holding tenants responsible for their personal consumption, they will be more likely to reduce their electricity usage habits and lower the building’s overall electricity consumption.

Allocating Energy Costs Effectively

With rising energy costs and a growing focus on efficiency, it’s becoming increasingly important for facilities to understand their energy consumption in detail. Sub-metering offers a powerful solution by enabling building managers to monitor the energy usage of individual pieces of equipment. This data can then be used to allocate energy costs to specific departments or processes.

By pinpointing where and how energy is being used, building managers can identify inefficiencies and take corrective action. This not only helps in controlling costs but also contributes to the facility’s overall energy efficiency.

Increase Energy Efficiency with N4 EnergyManager

Sub-metering can help you better manage energy consumption and save on costs. But what if we say you can further optimise your energy usage and automate various tasks?

Yes, it’s possible with N4 EnergyManager – our flagship energy management software. It can help you boost the energy efficiency of your buildings by automatically tracking and analysing all types of energy use. It also generates invoices, bills, and detailed reports.

With customisable dashboards and a simple navigation menu, you can easily evaluate your energy consumption and identify opportunities to save significantly on energy costs.

Contact us today for a demo!

Conclusion

Energy management is crucial for businesses looking to optimise energy use, reduce costs, and minimise environmental impact. By consistently monitoring and analysing energy consumption data, companies can track their energy management success through sub-metering. This data-driven approach enables informed decisions for future energy-saving strategies, enhancing overall efficiency.

If you have questions about our energy management software, feel free to contact us. Forest Rock is committed to assisting you and providing the information you need to make the best energy management decisions for your business.