Shopping Centres
A shopping centre's electricity goes two ways: to tenant supplies, and to the landlord areas nobody owns on their own. The largest landlord line is the cooling plant, and its cost comes back to tenants through the service charge.
Landlord split
The service charge should rest on meters, not floor area
In most centres the landlord’s energy cost is recovered through the service charge and divided by floor area. That puts a food court trading until late and a fashion unit that closes at six in the same bracket, and it is why apportionment is challenged every year.
Once landlord systems and tenant supplies are metered separately, the split stops being a matter of opinion. The share of the total that went to the mall, the car park and the plant room is read from the measurement record, not estimated.
- Tenant supplies and landlord systems metered separately
- Landlord share divided by a defined apportionment key
- Monthly tenant statement from the same record
When a tenant challenges the figure, the answer is the half-hourly record behind it. Newer centres often have the sub-meters already: Part L requires sub-metering in new non-domestic buildings over 1,000 m². How a tenant manages its own unit is covered on the retail stores page.
Consumption Tree
month end · from the main meterCooling
The largest landlord line is the cooling plant
Malls, food court, cinema foyer and service corridors are usually cooled from one central plant. Chillers, air handling unit fans, cooling towers and pumps together make up the biggest part of the landlord bill.
Raw kWh cannot say whether that plant runs well. A rise in July comes from the weather. The real question is whether the plant reaches the efficiency it reached before in the same conditions.
- System COP includes pumps and towers; machine COP covers the chiller alone
- Expected band corrected for wet-bulb temperature
- Tower approach and part-load running tracked separately
Hours below the band go to the technical team as alarms and are read alongside the maintenance record, plan against done. “The plant is expensive” becomes a finding with a machine, a load and a component attached. The chiller and cooling module covers the method in detail.
Cooling Plant
today · 15:00 · against expected band- System COP · plant 3.9COP below band
- Chiller 1 · 74% load 4.8COP within band
- Chiller 2 · 38% load 4.1COP low at part load
- Tower approach 5.6K above limit
After close
What is still running once the doors are shut?
A centre does not empty when it closes. Cleaners work the malls and security staff are in the control room, so some lighting and ventilation has to stay on.
The problem is load beyond that plan. If an air handling unit that should stop at close runs until morning, or escalators keep turning in an empty mall, the night base load grows quietly and never shows as its own line on the bill.
- Cleaning and security windows defined separately in the calendar
- Planned night load and unexpected load calculated apart
- Breaches sent as alarms to the centre manager and technical manager
Alarms are role-based. A plant warning goes to the FM team, a night-load summary to the centre manager, by email or WhatsApp. Façade, signage and car park lighting run on an astronomical timer rather than a fixed hour, and landlord HVAC follows the centre’s own trading calendar through remote control.
Daily Profiles
landlord supply · last 7 daysRed band
Evening trading meets the most expensive hours
Under half-hourly settlement, when power is used matters as much as how much. DUoS charges split the day into red, amber and green bands, and red is the most expensive. The exact hours vary by distribution network operator, but they often fall in the weekday early evening, when a centre is still trading at full load.
The panel shows how much landlord load sits inside the red band and which systems carry it. Some of it is fixed, such as mall lighting during trading. Some can move: pre-cooling earlier in the afternoon, or staging car park ventilation on air quality rather than a timer.
- Landlord load in the red band, system by system
- Peak demand tracked against the agreed supply capacity
- Hours below a 0.95 power factor flagged on the same screen
Agreed capacity cuts both ways. Peaks above it bring excess capacity charges, and an agreement far above real demand is paid for every month. Measured peaks show which way the agreement should move. The guides on red-band time of use and agreed capacity explain the charges.
Red-Band Load
landlord systems · weekday average| System | Load kW | Share % | Movable |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chiller plant | 310 | 40.3 | partly |
| Air handling units | 145 | 18.8 | partly |
| Mall lighting | 120 | 15.6 | no |
| Car park ventilation | 85 | 11.0 | yes |
| Escalators and lifts | 70 | 9.1 | no |
| Façade and signage | 40 | 5.2 | no |
| Total | 770 | 100.0 |
Performance
Normalised for footfall and weather
If this September cost more than last September, there are three possible reasons: a warmer month, a busier month, or something wrong in the plant. The raw bill cannot separate them.
The energy performance module builds a baseline from the centre’s own history. Cooling degree days and footfall enter the model as variables, expected consumption is calculated for every month, and the actual figure is compared with it.
- Baseline built on degree days and footfall
- Months outside the band marked separately
- Cumulative deviation (CUSUM) tracks the effect of each change
The same model serves reporting. If the owning company qualifies for ESOS Phase 4, the qualification date is 31 December 2026 and notification is due by 5 December 2027; the ESOS guide covers the data side. Centres working to ISO 50001 use the same baseline and deviation record.
Baseline
12 months · monthly observationsWhich modules work in a shopping centre
| Module | What it does here |
|---|---|
| Energy Consumption | Landlord and tenant split, half-hourly trend, after-close load |
| Chillers and Cooling | System and machine COP, towers and pumps, weather correction |
| Bill Validation | Each supply’s bill checked line by line against the measurement record |
| Power Quality | Power factor, harmonics from LED drivers and inverters, voltage events |
| Energy Performance and ISO 50001 | Baseline with footfall and degree days, CUSUM |
| Remote Control | Façade, signage and car park on an astronomical timer, landlord schedules |
| Standby Power | Generator and UPS readiness for life-safety systems, test reports |
| AI Assistant | Sourced answers to “why did the landlord share rise this month” |
Owners with more than one centre
For owners, funds and REITs the question is the portfolio, not one building. Centres differ in size, climate and footfall, so placing their bills side by side always makes the largest one look worst.
The panel judges each centre against its own baseline and reports the deviation as a percentage. Centres in different cities are compared on the same scale, and one list shows which plant is below its band and whose night load has grown. Each centre’s bills are checked against its own measurement record, and Enver, the AI assistant, answers questions across the portfolio with the data it used.
Standby power sits on the same screen. Generators and UPS units that carry emergency lighting, smoke extract and fire systems are tracked for readiness, and each test leaves a report. For the wider picture see commercial buildings; mixed-use schemes may also find the hotels and offices pages useful.
Frequently asked
How are landlord and tenant consumption separated?
Below the main meter, tenant supplies and landlord systems are metered separately. The landlord share is summed from its own meters rather than estimated, then divided by a defined apportionment key. The monthly tenant statement rests on the half-hourly record.
Does this replace our service charge process?
No. It supplies the measured figures the service charge apportionment needs and keeps the record behind them, so a challenge from a tenant can be answered with data rather than a floor-area calculation.
Is cleaning and security load after close treated as waste?
No. Cleaning and security windows are defined separately in the calendar and their planned load is kept apart. What gets flagged is load outside that plan: an air handling unit, car park fan or escalator that should have stopped.
Can we compare centres in different cities?
Yes. Each centre is judged against its own baseline, with degree days and footfall in the model. The comparison uses the percentage deviation from expected consumption, not raw kWh.
How is the price set?
For a shopping centre the price depends on the number of metered points and the modules switched on. Details are on the pricing page.
Let us measure what is happening on your site.
In a one-hour call we look at your existing setup and set out exactly which measurement points are needed and what you would be able to see.