Tech OVN

Solution

HVAC & Chilled-Water Tenant Billing

BTU Plus Billing System.

Bill tenants for the cooling they actually consume. When a mall, office tower, tech park, or hospital runs central chilled water, flat-rate and area-based charges are inaccurate and dispute-prone — heavy users get subsidised by light ones. BTU Plus billing puts a Titan Plus BTU meter on each tenant, AHU, or floor and turns metered cooling energy into automated, itemised, dispute-proof bills.

Tech OVN Energy Intelligence Platform — multi-tenant HVAC chilled-water billing dashboard with per-tenant cooling consumption

Why Flat and Area-Based Cooling Charges Cause Disputes

In most buildings with central HVAC, tenants are charged for cooling by floor area or a flat monthly rate. Neither reflects what a tenant actually consumed. A 24×7 data-heavy office, a restaurant with a busy kitchen, and a lightly-occupied showroom on the same floor plate all pay the same per square foot — even though their cooling loads differ enormously.

The result is structural unfairness: light users subsidise heavy users, the operator cannot recover the true central-plant cost, and every billing cycle invites a dispute nobody can resolve because there is no measurement to point to. There is also no way to see which tenant is wasting cooling, because the plant bill is one lump sum.

BTU Plus billing replaces the formula with a meter. Every tenant pays for the cooling they actually used — and the bill reconciles to the meter.

How BTU Plus Billing Works

Measure the cooling energy each tenant draws, then turn it into an automated itemised bill — thermal and electrical, on one device.

What BTU Plus Billing Delivers

Seven capabilities that make metered cooling billing fair, automated, and defensible.

Accurate EN 1434 Thermal Metering

Cooling energy is measured the way it is actually delivered — chilled-water flow multiplied by supply/return ΔT, computed to EN 1434 with matched RTD probes. Revenue-grade, not estimated.

Per-Tenant / Per-AHU Allocation

One meter per tenant connection, air-handling unit, or floor. Every zone gets its own thermal and electrical registers, so cooling cost lands on whoever consumed it.

Tamper-Evident, Revenue-Grade Data

Sealed registers, tamper detection, and timestamped readings on the same chip. When a tenant queries a bill, the data holds up — because it was captured to a billing standard.

Automated Itemised Invoices

The Energy Intelligence Platform turns metered TR-hr and kWh-thermal into monthly, itemised tenant bills automatically — no manual meter walks, no spreadsheet reconciliation.

Multi-Tenant Dashboard

Property managers see the whole building; each tenant sees only their own cooling consumption, cost, and trend. Role-based access keeps tenant data separate.

Dispute-Proof Audit Trail

Every reading is logged with a timestamp and retained. Billing periods reconcile to the meter, so cooling-charge disputes are settled by data instead of negotiation.

Combined Electrical + Thermal on One Device

Titan Plus BTU meters chilled-water thermal energy and electrical energy on a single DIN-rail unit — bill the cooling, monitor the pump/AHU electrical load, one device per point.

What You Measure & Bill

The billing registers Titan Plus BTU captures on every tenant, AHU, or floor connection.

Metered for billing

ParameterSpecification
Thermal energykWh-thermal / TR-hr (tons of refrigeration-hours) per tenant
Cooling loadInstantaneous TR (tons of refrigeration) and kW-thermal
Chilled-water flowm³/h and cumulative volume, via external ultrasonic or electromagnetic flow meter
Supply / return temperatureDual matched RTD probes, live supply, return, and ΔT
Thermal calculationEN 1434 compliant (flow × ΔT), temperature-compensated water properties
Electrical energykWh, kVAh, demand — Class 0.5S per IEC 62053-22, for pumps / AHUs / tenant supply
Per-tenant registersIndependent billing registers per tenant / AHU / floor, sealed and timestamped
Billing period dataInterval load profile with configurable billing cycles for automated invoicing

Thermal standard

Cooling energy is computed to EN 1434 — the standard for thermal energy meters used in inter-party billing — with matched RTD probes. Class 2 (±4% combined) is the usual benchmark for commercial tenant billing.

Where It Fits

Six building types running central cooling where metered tenant billing ends the dispute.

Malls & Retail

Bill each store for the chilled water it draws instead of dividing the central plant bill by floor area. Heavy-cooling F&B units stop being subsidised by low-load retail.

Office Towers & Business Parks

Per-tenant, per-floor cooling allocation for multi-tenant offices. Fair recovery of central HVAC cost, with consumption transparency for ESG-conscious occupiers.

Tech & IT Parks

High, uneven cooling loads across occupiers with different operating hours. Meter each tenant connection so 24×7 operations pay for their real share.

Hospitals

Central chilled water serving departments, diagnostics, and leased spaces (pharmacy, cafeteria, labs). Allocate cooling cost per department or per licensee accurately.

Hotels & Mixed-Use

Separate cooling billing for retail podium, banquet, serviced apartments, and commercial tenants running off one central plant on different tariffs.

District Cooling Networks

Per-connection chilled-water billing for scheme operators supplying multiple buildings. Auditable TR-hr consumption on every service point.

BTU Billing vs Flat-Rate vs Area-Based

The three ways central cooling gets charged to tenants — and why only one of them is fair, accurate, and dispute-proof.

Billing basisBTU Plus (metered)Flat-rate chargeArea-based (per sq ft)
Reflects actual cooling usedYes — measured TR-hr per tenantNo — everyone pays the sameNo — proxy for consumption
Fairness across tenantsHigh — pay for what you useLow — light users subsidise heavyLow — occupancy ≠ cooling load
Billing accuracyEN 1434 revenue-gradeNone — flat assumptionRough — sq ft formula only
Dispute riskLow — meter-backed audit trailHigh — perceived unfairnessHigh — contested allocations
Waste visibilityYes — per-tenant trends surface wasteNoneNone
Metering costOne meter per connection pointZero — but revenue leaksZero — but disputes cost more
Recovers central plant cost fairlyYes — matched to consumptionPartly — misallocatedPartly — misallocated

Frequently Asked Questions

Seven common questions on BTU billing meters, EN 1434 accuracy, retrofits, flow-sensor choice, and BMS integration.

A BTU meter (thermal energy meter) measures how much cooling energy a tenant actually consumes from a central chilled-water system. It reads chilled-water flow and the temperature difference between supply and return (ΔT), then computes thermal energy in kWh-thermal or TR-hours. That metered figure is what the tenant is billed on — instead of a flat charge or a floor-area estimate. Titan Plus BTU does this and also meters the electrical side on the same device.
EN 1434 is the European standard for thermal (heat/cooling) energy meters used in inter-party billing. Class 2 gives roughly ±4% combined worst-case error and is the usual benchmark for commercial tenant billing; Class 1 (±3%) is used where tighter accuracy is required. Titan Plus BTU meets Class 2 with matched RTD temperature probes, which is accurate enough that meter-backed bills are very hard to dispute.
Yes. Titan Plus BTU mounts on the DIN rail in your existing panel, and the flow measurement is typically ultrasonic — clamp-on transducers for larger pipe sizes mean the chilled-water line often does not need to be cut. A typical tenant connection can be metered without plant downtime, which makes it practical to roll billing out across an occupied building.
Both work with Titan Plus BTU. Ultrasonic (especially clamp-on) is the usual choice for retrofits and larger pipe diameters because it installs without breaking into the line and has no pressure drop. Electromagnetic (in-line) flow meters are chosen for new installations or where the pipe must be tapped anyway, and can be very accurate at low flow. The right choice depends on pipe size, whether it is a retrofit, and the flow range — the BTU meter sizing tools help you pick.
A Titan Plus BTU meter on each tenant connection or AHU measures the cooling energy that tenant uses over the billing period. The Energy Intelligence Platform reads those registers, applies your tariff, and generates an itemised monthly invoice automatically — cooling consumed (TR-hr), rate, and total, plus any fixed charges. No manual meter reading, and each bill reconciles back to the meter.
Yes. Titan Plus BTU meters chilled-water thermal energy and electrical energy on one DIN-rail device, so a single unit per point can bill cooling (TR-hr) and, where needed, the tenant's electrical consumption too. For electricity-only sub-billing on tenant supplies, the same platform runs alongside our electricity sub-metering solution — one dashboard, both energy types.
Yes. Titan Plus BTU exposes data over Modbus RTU/TCP and MQTT, so your building management system sees each meter as a standard Modbus device and can read flow, ΔT, TR-hr, and electrical values. Billing runs on the Energy Intelligence Platform while the BMS keeps its operational view of the same meters — no duplicate metering required.

Ready to bill tenants for the cooling they actually use?

Talk to our team about BTU Plus billing for your mall, office tower, tech park, hospital, or district cooling scheme — fair, automated, dispute-proof.