Installation of chiller meters in each apartment of Discovery Gardens, a master community consisting of 291 buildings, will result in overall cost saving for each building and the apartment owners, but soon tenants will have to pay their chiller bills.
In a notice posted in the buildings, Nakheel Owner’s Association Management said that the BTU meters will allow consumption based billing for all tenants to pay for their own chiller water energy consumption (AC) and will ensure fair and accurate billing and enhance cost awareness.
The association states that the installation of meters will trigger energy saving and the buildings will become more environment friendly with potential savings of 15 to 30 per cent of total consumption proven.
On an average the total cost of cooling a building on is Dh410,000 per year and the new move can allow buildings to save nearly 61500 to 123,000 per year in energy costs.
Landlords have been paying chiller charges, which range between Dh5 and Dh7 per square feet, as part of the annual service charge.
Discovery Gardens’ master community has 291 buildings and has over 20,000 apartments.
Tenants are being informed in advance that during installation there will be no AC service for whole floor for one to two days and hence in order to minimise service disruption occupants will be required to allow access to your unit on the exact scheduled dates without failure to avoid delaying the whole process.
In November, Nakheel told ‘Emirates24|7’ that individual chiller meters will be installed across the buildings in Discovery Gardens from early next year.
“We plan to start this by early 2013 and it is expected to take around six months,” a company spokesperson said.
This website reported last year that Dubai’s Real Estate Regulatory Agency has started asking interim owners associations to install separate chiller meters at the time their annual budgets come for approval.
As per the Association Constitution Clause 65, Rera may enforce the owners association to install separate meters for all units and common areas for all utility service providers and may even enforce the utility service suppliers to separate the utility fees of the common areas from the fee for the unit owners. The utility service providers are also required to submit separate invoices directly to the unit owners and to the owners association for the common property.
Rera has been giving the chiller cost separately in the annual budget for some years now for the purpose to allow owners to know the chiller charges which they can pass on to their tenants if they think so.
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