The Heat Network (Metering & Billing) Regulations 2014 introduced the concept of mandatory metering in commercial buildings as a means for people to make better informed decisions about improving efficiency and lowering expenditure. But are we too focussed on meeting Regulations and not focussed enough on just being Smart?

The Regulations have raised awareness of smart billing but to achieve real results we need to not only think smart but act smart too – and that means joining up the dots with an automated billing solution.

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. Final customer meters, located in the customer’s property, apartment or office also became mandatory on new build properties and buildings undergoing major renovation.

With relatively few exemptions, and a range of both criminal and civil penalties for those failing to comply, the introduction of this legislation confirmed the requirement for an accurate billing process ….and as a result opened up the door for automated billing.

Automated billing solutions are proving to be something of a revolution in the tenant billing process largely because they accept 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.

Most systems utilise an intuitive display which allows the user to add and alter monitoring points on the system. It also provides the landlord with an overview of all tenants, allowing comparisons to be run, dual tariffs to be set up and different tariffs to be set up for each tenant if required. In addition, the process effectively makes the job of the landlord easier as tenant invoices are calculated using digitally collected data. Tenants will also have access to real-time data allowing them to see how behavioural changes will affect their utility bills and where tenants are committed to reducing their energy usage, their efforts will be instantly visible.

In meeting the requirements of the Heat Network (Metering & Billing) Regulations 2014, an automated billing solution effectively joins up the dots, allowing the landlord to not only monitor energy usage, but do so in a manner which allows for accurate billing on a tenant by tenant basis.

But more importantly it provides a massive leap in the direction of energy reduction and savings on the bottom line. Perhaps it’s time to bring automated billing to the top of your agenda – you’re part way there already – click here to take the next step.