Hey Everyone, If your in a big apartment (like 10 floors), and tenants don't pay for energy (included in rent), is there any way the landlord can monitor energy usage for a particular apartment? Or is it more likely they can only monitor overall energy usage? I ask because each year they ask for additional payments if you intend to run an air conditioner or something that uses lots of power. I suspect the only the only way they can verify this, is by actually entering your apartment to do spot checks?
It depends on how the building is wired, but yes it is possible and common. Generally though, if your rent includes electricity it usually means that they are not wired for individual usage (why include electric costs when it can be passed on directly). If you are trying to avoid paying the extra usage fee, and it is included in your lease, then you could just be kicked out or billed later (with extra fees on top).
where i life, every apartment, flat, house or what ever has its own electricity counter. so they can check and charge for each household separately.
Same here. Very common in germany. A while back you could also make them go backwards lol. As well as stop your water counter and make the heating system stop counting as well. On top of that, you could easily have free cable :lol: Ah well, but these days its mostly over. The biggest fun you can have is turn off somebodys water.
i remember that our counters were sealed with a lead-seal. so except of the authorized operator, noone could fiddle with them. the best time was, when pay-tv was still a pure analogue issue. a simple band filter between the antenna cable, and you got it.
I am on the board of directors at a very large apartment complex (650 apartments). We used to bill the tenants for electricity on a yearly basis but just recently started to bill them every 4 months. It takes some time to go round and check the usage on every electricity meter (we pay ~$4000 each time to a company to do it for us). So, to save money we are installing new meters later this year that will report the usage remotely, and we have calculated on breaking even within a year or so. Shiggsy
The UK Government is currently piloting a scheme whereby electricity & gas usage are monitored remotely by the utility company. As well as displaying your usage within your home on LCD, the data from the unit is fed back to the utility company. How long before someone invents a device that intercepts that data transfer, alters the data and sends it on it's way? Who knows, but just like everything else people will try and tamper with these things. Frankly, this countries track record with personal data of any kind is pretty awful and I don't think having yet another layer of complexity will work terribly well. Errors and lost data, erroneous bills and faults will occur.
If anyone from Spain reads this, you will for sure remember fiveteen people in the house of the guy that had a pirated Canal+ watching the Sunday's football. :lol: They want to do the same here, and I think that in new installations the counter are alredy ready to be monitored when the infraestructure, still that won´t happen in a sooo long time, for example in my neighborhood most counters are 1960´s bitension counters, and in the medieval downtown the electrical infraestructure looks so old that it´s frightening to walk under those wires. Even old tramway wires are used for the home phones and electrical connections so imagine. xD
We have a box that is connected to some kind of terminal. They don't have to even come in to our apartment.
You didn't even need that around 1990 (Watched Adams Family this way, looked like slightly bad reception). @trenton: looks like your apartment has no sure way to track electricity usage, but there sure will be hell to pay if you have an unregistered AC, but there will be no problem to have a serverrack full of 360s.
Planning on growing 50 pot plants using halogens in your main room? Yes, they have individual meters in the basement so they will see if you're using abusive amounts. An air conditioner uses the same amount of power as a fridge, it shouldn't cause problems. I don't know what country you live in however...
I live in Canada. So I guess having an aircon running won't significantly make me stand out (energy wise) compared to others?.
No, your television probably uses more electricity. I would only worry if you had three room aircon, three large PC servers, two fridges.
