Per-apartment electricity, water and heat-share metering; transparent allocation of common areas and leak detection from night flow. Let the service charge rest on measurement, not estimation.
Most energy disputes in residential estates come from missing measurement. Common-area electricity, booster pumps, lifts, car-park lighting and landscape irrigation are lumped into a single line; the owner cannot see where the amount came from. Any line whose source cannot be shown becomes an argument at the management meeting.
The second problem is manual reading. A monthly meter round is both late and error-prone: one misread index returns as a double deviation in the next period. Worse, no warning is produced during the month; abnormal consumption is noticed only after the period closes.
The third is invisible loss. A basement leak or a faulty float valve can feed the bill for months unnoticed. When the gap between the main meter and the sum of apartment meters is not tracked continuously, that loss stays invisible to everyone. An energy monitoring and management system solves all three with the same metering infrastructure.
| Item | Measurement | Allocation |
|---|---|---|
| Apartment electricity | Electricity sub-meter — Modbus | Direct individual consumption |
| Apartment water | M-Bus water meter | Direct individual consumption |
| Central heating | Calorimeter / heat cost allocator | Individual share + common consumption share |
| Common-area electricity | Main meter − sum of sub-meters | Equal share / floor area / usage ratio |
| Booster pump, lift, car park | Dedicated panel analyser | Common expense — source visible |
| Invisible loss | Night-flow baseline | Not allocated — reported as a fault |
Mechanical or ultrasonic water meters with an M-Bus output are fitted at the apartment inlet and read remotely. The meter round disappears entirely.
Measures the heat consumed per apartment in kWh on central heating. Calculated from the flow-return temperature difference and the flow rate.
A dedicated analyser for the main panel, booster pump, lift and car park. Current, voltage, power factor and index are read from the same device.
At the end of every period, consumption per apartment, unit price and common-area share are produced together with the calculation breakdown.
In an estate, water consumption is expected to approach zero after midnight. If the flow does not fall to zero at those hours, the remaining flow is most likely going somewhere nobody is using: a basement leak, a faulty float valve, an irrigation valve left open. When this baseline is tracked as its own daily series, the day the leak started is unmistakable.
The same logic works for electricity: the gap between the main meter and the sum of apartment meters should stay within a stable band. If that gap creeps upward, either an unmetered load has been added or a meter is failing to read. See the water leak early warning and main meter monitoring pages for detail.
For commercial units in mixed-use projects, continue with sub-tenant billing; for whole-building operation, see building energy management. If your estate has EV charging units, move on to charge point monitoring; if you have installed rooftop solar, see solar production tracking. For a rough savings estimate the free calculators are enough.
A free demo with your existing apartment meters — close the service-charge debate.
Explore the system with your own data in a demo session.