Burwood New Development Apartments
The building: 95 studio apartments in Burwood, purpose-built for short-term accommodation.
The challenge
The owners had planned to rent the apartments on an all-inclusive basis. A last-minute change to that plan meant the building now needed a way to bill for electricity, and they called in The NRG Company.
The building had been constructed with only one electricity meter. There was no apartment metering at all, and no common property meters either, so there was no way to split the electricity usage. To make it harder, the design of the main switchboard meant the common property circuits, which were spread across it, couldn’t practically be sub-metered. Metering every individual piece of common equipment would have been prohibitively expensive. With the occupancy certificate just issued, time was against us.
Our solution
We designed a plan to install sub-meters on every apartment, and to place meters on all the large equipment fed directly from the main switchboard. Every part of the building was now metered through approved NMI metering.
The owners also didn’t want a common property bill sent to them, or anything resembling a strata levy. They wanted to divide the common area electricity among the tenants. The question was how to do that fairly. Splitting it equally would mean a tenant who was away for weeks would still pay for electricity they hadn’t used.
So we designed and built a custom telemetry calculation in our metering back end. It distributes the common energy in proportion to each tenant’s own usage. It was created specifically for this building and the owners’ requirements.
The results
- The whole building metered in time,with the occupancy certificate just issued.
- No common property bill for the owners,and no strata-style levy for anyone to administer.
- A fair split of common power.Each tenant pays in proportion to their own usage, so nobody covers the electricity of an empty apartment.
- A system built for this building,which we continue to manage with great success.
- Full visibilityof where the building’s electricity is used, including the common property equipment.
We run it, so you don’t have to. The NRG Company manages the network day to day, including metering, invoicing and credit management.
Has your new build been completed with a single meter, or a change of plan?
Whether you’re an owner, a developer or a committee, we can help. Let us assess your building and show you what’s possible.