When you fly into LAX and the plane is skimming over the rooftops of strip malls, office buildings, hospitals, and other large properties, you will notice there is hardly a solar panel in sight. Market trends are showing solar is profitable for property owners and a key tactic for tenant satisfaction. So why, with the multitude of benefits, are owners of commercial properties not taking advantage of adding solar to their income-generating mix? One reason is the complexity surrounding tenant billing for properties with multiple tenant meters. Until now, the industry has been unable to find a convenient way to work with local utility companies and consolidate tenant billing into a single hassle-free system. Meet OneBill™, the industry’s leading consolidated energy bill. Below, we will walk you through the ways this platform is revolutionizing the energy industry for commercial multi-tenant properties.
The challenge
In a property with multiple tenants, often the tenants are each individually responsible for paying their utilities. Each rentable space is connected to a utility meter that monitors the amount of energy used and the tenants are provided a monthly bill by their utility provider for the amount of energy used. It’s convenient and simple for both the tenant and the property owner. Adding solar to a multi-tenant property adds a new source of energy outside the local utility provider, presenting new challenges. Challenge 1: How do we track the total amount of energy generated by the solar program? Challenge 2: How is the newly generated energy allocated across multiple tenants consuming different amounts of energy each month? Challenge 3: How are the tenants billed each month now that there are multiple sources of energy, first from the solar program and second through the utility provider?
The solution
To solve these challenges, King Energy developed OneBill™, a software platform that condenses multi-tenant energy charges into an informative, easy-to-understand single bill and allocates energy across tenants who opt-in to the program. Here’s how the platform works:
- Once a solar program is live, we work with the tenants to opt into the OneBill™ program.
- OneBill™ monitors energy generated from the solar system, as well as the energy usage of each participating tenant.
- OneBill™ analyzes tenant energy use and allocates solar energy to the participating tenants.
- OneBill™ works with the local utility to consolidate the utility and solar charges into one easy-to-understand monthly bill.
- Tenants make a single payment through the easy-to-use billing portal and can easily track their energy use and solar savings.
The software takes a complex problem and creates a seamless, hassle-free solution removing one of the largest barriers to commercial solar adoption.
The tenant experience
The real winner of the OneBill™ software is the tenant. Sign up is simple, usually taking less than 10 minutes, and the benefits are huge:
- Utility savings: by opting into solar, tenants see reduced utility expenses reflected in their monthly bills.
- Consolidated statement: the savings and energy use are clearly outlined on a single consolidated statement.
- Intuitive billing portal: tenants have access to the self-service portal for easy bill payment and past statements.
For tenants, the time invested in signing up is small, but the savings are huge.
To sum it up
The US spends $1.1 trillion annually on electricity (5.6% of the GDP), and solar currently supplies only 2% of domestic energy capacity. With the complexities of commercial property energy billing solved by solutions like King Energy OneBill™, the adoption of renewable energy is an unquestioned macro-trend that will drive the next twenty years of the US economy. Want to learn more about King Energy’s OneBill™? Visit www.kingenergy.com or contact us by clicking here.
