Smart Metering — Energy Visibility That Drives Action
Smart metering provides granular, real-time visibility into energy consumption at the circuit, equipment, or tenant level — enabling energy waste identification, utility bill validation, tenant sub-billing, ESG reporting, and the anomaly detection that catches equipment failures and energy waste before they become significant cost impacts.
What RLM Delivers on Smart Metering
Utility meters tell you how much energy a building consumed over a month — smart metering tells you which equipment consumed it, when, and whether that consumption was normal. Submeters on major loads (HVAC, lighting, manufacturing equipment, EV chargers) provide the granularity needed for energy management, tenant billing, and ESG reporting that utility meters alone can never deliver. RLM advises on smart metering strategy, equipment selection, and the data platform that turns energy data into operational action.
How We Approach Smart Metering
How we run a Smart Metering engagement: establish the baseline, evaluate the market on evidence, negotiate, then stay through deployment.
Metering Requirements Assessment
We assess your metering requirements — energy management objectives, tenant billing requirements, ESG reporting data needs, and the specific systems and circuits where sub-metering granularity is needed to answer operational questions.
Smart Meter Architecture Design
We design the sub-metering architecture — meter type selection (revenue-grade vs. non-revenue-grade), communication protocol (Modbus, BACnet, cellular, LoRaWAN), data logger design, and the integration with your building management system or energy management platform.
Metering Platform Evaluation
We evaluate energy metering and management platforms — Schneider EcoStruxure, Siemens Desigo, Lucid BuildingOS, Facilio, EnergyCAP — against your reporting requirements, integration capabilities, and the analytics that transform raw meter data into actionable insights.
Tenant Sub-Billing Design
We design tenant sub-billing systems that allocate energy costs based on measured consumption — ensuring billing accuracy, tenant transparency, and the audit trail that resolves billing disputes.
Smart Metering Evaluation Criteria
How we run a Smart Metering engagement: establish the baseline, evaluate the market on evidence, negotiate, then stay through deployment.
Revenue-Grade Metering Requirements
Tenant billing requires revenue-grade (ANSI C12 certified) meters with billing accuracy standards. Evaluate whether revenue-grade meters are required for your sub-billing application — non-revenue-grade meters are less expensive but may not meet billing accuracy requirements.
Communication Protocol Reliability
Smart meter value depends on reliable data transmission. Evaluate communication protocol reliability in your facility environment — wired protocols (Modbus, BACnet) are more reliable but require cabling; wireless protocols reduce installation cost but introduce transmission reliability risk.
Data Granularity vs. Storage
15-minute interval data provides much better energy management insight than hourly data but generates significantly more data over time. Evaluate the granularity required for your use cases and the storage and processing costs at that granularity.
Integration with Utility Data
Smart sub-metering data is most valuable when combined with utility billing data and weather data. Evaluate platform integration with utility data streams and weather normalization that enables apples-to-apples energy performance comparison.
Cybersecurity
Smart meters are internet-connected devices on the building network. Evaluate network segmentation for metering infrastructure and the security of the communication protocols and cloud platform used to collect and analyze meter data.
"We needed smart metering and energy management across our campus portfolio. RLM mapped the vendor landscape, ran the evaluation, and we're now hitting our ESG targets ahead of schedule."
No upfront fees, no retainer, and no obligation to act on what we find.
Where This Matters Most
Sector-specific considerations we see repeatedly in iot engagements.
A Sample of the IoT Providers We Evaluate
RLM is vendor neutral. These are among 600+ providers in our evaluation set — inclusion here is not an endorsement, and we are paid by the provider you choose, not by any provider in particular. How that works →
Ready to Get Smart Metering Right?
Talk to an RLM advisor who specializes in enterprise IoT deployments. Independent guidance from platform selection through operational deployment.