What is Tenant Metering?

Definition

Tenant metering is the process of tracking utility consumption used by individual tenants, usually for billing purposes when the utility charges based on the whole building's usage through what is known as a master meter.

Why it Matters

Tenant metering is considered a more fair and equitable process for utility billing with multiple tenants because costs are related to each individual tenant's consumption, instead of an estimated cost from square footage or other means. With direct tenant metering, tenants are more likely to reduce their overall energy use, which extends to cost savings for the owner.  There are also ancillary services that can be enabled with tenant metering, such as automated detection and notification of leakages.

The most obvious benefit to ownership is the cost savings from speed of tenant billing and eliminations of human error, and the resulting disputes.