Metering

A building can have several kinds of meters, owned by the utility or by the building:

• Utility revenue meters: owned by the utility and used for billing electricity, natural gas, water and steam
• Submeters: owned by the building to measure specific floors, tenants, systems or equipment
• Interval meters: record consumption in short time steps, commonly every 15 minutes for electricity
• Smart meters (AMI): interval meters that send data back to the utility automatically
• Thermal energy (BTU) meters: measure heating or cooling energy delivered by a water loop, using flow and temperature difference
• Pulse output and networked meters: send readings to a building automation system or energy management platform

Electric meters measure two different things. Consumption, in kilowatt-hours (kWh), is the total energy used over a period. Demand, in kilowatts (kW), is the rate of use, and utilities usually bill commercial customers for the highest average demand recorded in any interval during the month, often a 15-minute window.

This matters because a single spike, for example starting several chillers and air handlers at once on a Monday morning, can set the demand charge for the whole month. Interval data shows exactly when those peaks happen. Natural gas is billed in therms or cubic feet, and water in gallons or cubic feet.

The main utility meter tells you what the building used in total. Submeters break that total down by tenant, by floor, or by system, such as HVAC, lighting, plug loads or a data center. Without submeters, it is hard to tell whether a jump in the bill came from a chiller problem, a new tenant or a schedule change.

Submetering is also used to bill tenants for their actual use, to measure cooling tower makeup water for sewer credits, and to verify savings after an upgrade. Newer editions of ASHRAE 90.1 include energy monitoring requirements for larger new buildings.

Meter data is the starting point for most energy work. Facility teams use it to track energy use intensity (EUI, energy per square foot per year), compare buildings in a portfolio, spot unusual consumption, check utility bills for errors, and report through ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager. Many US cities and some states require larger buildings to benchmark and report their energy and water use every year.

Useful records include each meter's number, what it measures, its location and the area or equipment it serves, the utility account it belongs to, multipliers and units, and where its data comes from. Wrong multipliers and unit mix-ups are a common source of bad energy data.

In Syyclops, meter points available on the building automation system come in through the read-only BACnet gateway, and the AI Engineer can turn building data into an energy dashboard as one of its AI Artifacts.

Outside utility measurement, metering can mean controlled dosing or flow regulation. A metering pump delivers a precise volume of liquid, which is how many cooling tower and boiler water treatment systems add chemicals. In refrigeration, the metering device (such as an expansion valve) controls how much refrigerant enters the evaporator. In traffic engineering, ramp metering uses signals to control how quickly vehicles enter a highway.