In Croatia more than 40% of total energy is consumed by buildings and for this reason presents the greatest potential for energy efficiency.  Furthermore, Nearly Zero Energy Buildings (nZEBs) have several advantages over other buildings including the fact that they use smart technologies to manage the technical systems of the building, i.e. building automation and management, smart configuration and monitoring of technical systems or parts thereof. Smart metering and AMR systems are an example of such.

Smart metering and fair cost allocation

EMASYS d.o.o. was hired by Martinkovac Gradnja d.o.o., a company owned by GP KRK d.d., a Croatian construction giant, to install an advanced metering system at a luxury apartment complex in Rijeka with an A+ energy certificate.

The project consists of two mixed-use buildings each with 8 floors and a total of 78 residential units. The advanced metering system included main gas and water meters and 90 cold water submeters, 80 hot water submeters and 82 heat meters; a system that offers tenants / owners individual bills and cost allocation based on the actual gas and water consumption of each housing unit.

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On a monthly basis, we send the company that manages the buildings – KV-stan d.o.o. – the distribution of consumption for hot water and heating with data collected from the advanced metering infrastructure and a per-apartment calculation based on actual usage.

The advantages of smart metering and submetering

A fixed metering system with sub-meters for each housing unit is an increasingly significant sales advantage for new buildings as well as for building management. It:

• allows for fairer and more accurate billing based on actual consumption
• helps detect water losses by comparing supply and actual consumption
• encourages tenants / owners to be more aware of their energy and water consumption and pay more attention to their usage, saving them money and saving the planet.

Over a period of more than two years in which we manage the residential buildings in Martinkovac, we can confirm that the smart metering system is really efficient in terms of lower consumption and therefore lower and fairer utility bills received by individual co-owners. In addition, these buildings are directly involved in reducing carbon emissions and energy consumption, one of the EU’s climate change mitigation measures of today’s reality.

Karmen Vukorepa – KV-stan d.o.o.