Bringing Clarity to Shared Utility Costs

The landscape of hospitality is evolving. Increasingly, properties operate not just as hotels but as multifaceted destinations, incorporating onsite retail outlets, outsourced spa and restaurant operations, and even residential units. From our experience working across the sector, this increasing complexity presents a significant operational and financial challenge: how do you fairly and accurately allocate utility costs – electricity, water, gas, heating, cooling – amongst diverse users sharing the same site?
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Traditional master metering simply cannot cope with this complexity. Relying on estimations or floor-area calculations for billing concessionaires or allocating costs internally often leads to inaccuracies, disputes, potential revenue loss for the property owner, and crucially, removes any incentive for tenants or outsourced operators to manage their own consumption efficiently.

The Augos Solution: Precision Measurement for Accurate Allocation

At Augos, we specialise in bringing clarity to complex utility scenarios. The foundation of fair allocation and accurate billing is precise measurement. Our platform is built upon deploying robust, high-accuracy sub-metering solutions tailored to the specific needs of each area and utility type:
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• Electricity: Granular monitoring of individual retail units, kitchens, spa facilities, or residential blocks.
• Water & Gas: Dedicated meters for high-consumption areas like laundries, kitchens, or specific tenant spaces.
• Thermal Energy: Utilising BTU meters to accurately measure the heating or cooling energy (chilled water, hot water) consumed by different zones, properties sharing a central plant, or specific large AHUs.

All data feeds into our secure, reliable platform, providing a single source of truth for consumption across the entire property portfolio. We ensure the integrity of this data through continuous monitoring of the measurement devices themselves (checking connectivity and health), giving you confidence in the figures used for billing and analysis.

Enabling Fair Billing, Cost Recovery, and Internal Accountability

With precise, verifiable consumption data for each distinct operation or area, Augos empowers properties to:

• Implement Accurate Tenant/Concessionaire Billing: Generate clear, defensible utility bills based on actual measured usage, ensuring fair cost recovery for energy, water, and other utilities provided.
• Allocate Internal Costs Effectively: Accurately assign utility costs to different internal departments (F&B, Spa, Rooms, Conferencing) for more precise P&L management and departmental accountability, as discussed in our previous insights.
• Enhance Transparency: Provide clear consumption data to tenants and department heads, fostering trust and enabling informed conversations about usage patterns.

Driving Efficiency Beyond Your Direct Control

A significant benefit we consistently observe is that accurate sub-metering and billing incentivise efficiency within tenant and concessionaire spaces. When third-party operators or residents are directly accountable for their measured consumption, they are far more motivated to implement their own energy-saving measures, contributing to the overall sustainability and cost-efficiency of the entire property. Augos data provides the baseline for them to track their own success.

Mastering Complexity: Real-World Examples of Augos in Action

The need for accurate allocation often involves sophisticated scenarios. Our experience includes implementing solutions for unique challenges:
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• Dynamic Energy Costs (Load Shedding in South Africa): In regions facing grid instability like South Africa, properties rely on diesel generators during load shedding, incurring significantly higher energy costs. For clients like Sun International's GrandWest Casino, Augos developed a solution that precisely measures and differentiates energy consumed from the municipal grid versus the on-site generators. This allows the property to accurately allocate the higher cost of generator-supplied power only to the relevant consumers (including concessionaires) during load shedding periods, ensuring fair and complete cost recovery.
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• Shared Central Plants (Chilled Water Allocation in Dubai): Managing shared central utility plants across multiple properties presents a major allocation challenge. At the iconic Jumeirah complex in Dubai, chilled water produced at a central plant serves multiple distinct properties sequentially, including the Burj Al Arab, Wild Wadi Water Park, Jumeirah Beach Hotel, and the Emirates Academy. Augos implemented a system using high-precision BTU meters at the entry and exit points of each property. By measuring the real-time flow rate and temperature difference (Delta T) of the chilled water, we accurately calculate the thermal energy (in BTUs or kWh) consumed by each entity from the shared loop. This allows for the fair, dynamic allocation of the central plant's significant operational costs based on each property's actual cooling demand.

Conclusion: Precision is Paramount

In today's complex, often mixed-use hospitality environments, accurate utility cost allocation and billing are no longer optional – they are critical for financial health, operational efficiency, and maintaining fair relationships with tenants and concessionaires. Guesswork and estimations inevitably lead to inaccuracies and lost opportunities.

Augos provides the essential measurement infrastructure, robust data platform, and experienced approach needed to bring clarity and control to even the most complex utility scenarios. We enable fair cost recovery, drive efficiency across your entire site, and provide the foundation for truly accountable energy management.

Contact Us

Facing challenges with utility allocation or concessionaire billing?

Contact Augos by email: info@augos.io or call: +27 87 093 6174 to discuss how our tailored measurement solutions can bring clarity and control to your property.