As an experienced professional with more than twenty years working in Ontario’s multi-residential energy sector, I’ve written this overview to help clarify how sub-metering works under current law, based on firsthand experience with condominium corporations, rental property owners, utilities, and regulators. However, I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. The information here is for general guidance only. For advice tailored to your specific building, condominium corporation, or lease agreements, please consult your own legal counsel before taking any steps, including entering contracts or modifying billing structures.
Sub-metering has been part of Ontario’s multi-residential landscape for a long time. It isn’t new, experimental, or controversial. It is a practical way to allocate electricity costs fairly, and it has consistently been shown to reduce overall consumption. For most people working in buildings every day, sub-metering simply reflects a basic reality: electricity is used by individuals, not by buildings in the abstract.
In Ontario, this approach has been supported by law for many years. The framework began taking shape in 2007 with Ontario Regulation 442/07, filed in October 2007 and coming into force on December 31, 2007. That regulation required individual suite-level electricity metering in new condominium buildings constructed on or after August 1, 2007. The current legislation governing the overall framework is the Energy Consumer Protection Act, 2010, which expanded and formalized the rules around metering, billing, and consumer protection.
Since then, individual metering has been implemented widely across Ontario’s multi-residential sector and has operated successfully for many years. In other words, individual metering isn’t a trend or a preference — it’s a baseline assumption that has been built into how modern buildings are designed and operated in Ontario for nearly two decades.
For condominium corporations, the law is clear.
Ontario’s electricity legislation allows condominium corporations to move to individual suite-level electricity metering even where a building’s declaration or governing documents assumed bulk billing. As summarized by Lash Condo Law, one of Ontario’s leading condominium law firms, “the legislation permits existing condominium corporations to enter into sub-metering agreements despite any declaration provision to the contrary.”
In practical terms, this means a board does not need to amend its declaration or governing documents in order to adopt suite-level electricity metering. The decision for a board is therefore not whether sub-metering is legally permitted, but whether it makes sense for the building and its owners.
Rental buildings bring a different set of practical considerations. Where electricity is structured as a tenant responsibility in the lease, tenants pay for their own usage once sub-metering is in place. The simplest approach is to include this structure in new leases from the outset. In existing buildings, sub-metering is often introduced gradually — either as units turn over or through voluntary tenant participation. Voluntary programs are more involved, but they have been implemented successfully where landlords clearly explain the change and pair it with tangible benefits, such as rent adjustments that offset the shift in billing.
Student housing is sometimes misunderstood. Only university-owned student residences are exempt from Ontario’s sub-metering framework. Privately owned or non-university student housing is treated the same as other rental buildings and follows the same licensing, metering, and consumer-protection expectations.
It is also worth being clear about what licensing actually involves. If a condominium corporation or building owner chooses to install meters and bill residents directly, they are no longer simply an owner or board — they become a sub-metering provider in the eyes of the law. That means the full set of licensing and compliance obligations applies to them. These include maintaining complete and auditable billing records for a minimum of six years, meeting prescribed customer-service and dispute-resolution standards, and ensuring continuous meter accuracy and certification.
As sub-metering providers, they would also be subject to federal measurement enforcement under the Electricity and Gas Inspection Act, including administrative monetary penalties for non-compliant billing. Those penalties can range from a few hundred dollars to up to $2,000 per occurrence, depending on the nature and severity of the violation.
This is why most condominium corporations and rental property owners choose not to take this on themselves. Sub-metering works best when it is handled by organizations built to carry the operational, regulatory, and compliance responsibilities of electricity billing day in and day out. When handled by experienced professionals, it is straightforward, defensible, and well understood — not because it is simple, but because the complexity is carried by those whose job it is to manage it every day.
Written by Erik Kalm of Alliance Metering Solutions, has over twenty years of experience in Ontario’s multi-residential energy sector.
Contact Alliance Metering Solutions to learn how easy and cost-effective it is to retrofit your building and start reaping the benefits today.
"*" indicates required fields