Increasing demand for conservation of resources and accounting for the particular use of those resources, specifically electricity, encourages building owners of buildings containing plural entities such as tenants to retrofit buildings with associated meters and corresponding individual electricity distribution panels for each tenant or account, with the intent of back-charging individual tenants for power consumption. However, the power distribution procedures and apparatus imposed by others, such as to comply with the National Electric Code, require particular procedures and apparatus which may not be available or cost-effective for retrofitting a multi-tenant building.
In commercial facilities such as office buildings and retail centers, the building space is divided into smaller units for the individual tenants, for whom the power consumption should be billed according to the actual usage of the individual tenant. However, periodic turnover of tenants and the resulting continual renovation and reallocation of building space to different tenants typically requires that any tenant undergoing a change, such as increasing or decreasing space within the building, or adding or deleting branch circuits to serve changing loads, may requiring re-routing of branch circuits from the circuit protective apparatus, such as circuit breaker panels, to the point of use, such as power receptacles and hard wired equipment connections in the case of large equipment requiring dedicated branch circuits, or modifications to those branch circuits. A modification may for example disconnect the distal portion of a branch circuit, with the branch circuit subsequently being extended to space not previously provided with electrical power, or alternatively, being reconnected to the distal portion of a branch circuit which has in turn been disconnected from its original distribution panel. This type of modification to a building entails not only significant costs due to electrical construction and remodeling, but also disruption to both the tenants requiring electrical modifications and also to other tenants who may be affected by temporary power disconnections to accommodate the modification project.
The world of commercial and other facilities having plural tenants and other entities who are susceptible to such disruptions remains in need of a system which can adapt billing procedures for electrical consumption to reflect appropriate billings with minimal changes to the physical electrical distribution system.