The short answer: it depends on how your energy is connected, not on the fact that you rent. There is European legislation that requires residents in a building with a shared installation — think of a block of apartments with one central boiler, or a holiday park with shared heating — to be able to see their actual consumption and be charged separately. If your property or your park has its own connection per unit, that specific discussion usually does not apply, and it is more a matter of the ordinary rules around passing on costs to guests or tenants.
Whether that rule actually applies to your situation depends on definitions that individual countries have filled in themselves: what counts as a "building", what as a "collective installation", and whether short-term stays are treated separately from permanent residence. That is precisely the kind of question where we do not give you a ready-made yes or no, but we are happy to show you where to look.
Who is this rule originally made for
The underlying idea is simple: if multiple households use the same installation for, say, heating, cooling or hot water, nobody can see how much they themselves are using. That is why residents in such buildings must gain insight into their own share, and that share must be fed back to them at regular intervals. The rule was written with residential buildings in mind, not specifically with holiday rentals. That does not automatically mean that landlords fall outside it — it means that the question revolves around the installation, not the type of guest.
When does this affect a standalone holiday home or B&B
If you have one property with its own connection to the grid, its own meter and its own meter cabinet, then precisely the element this legislation is about is missing: a shared system between multiple units. In that case, the question "what can I charge to my guest" usually comes down to other rules, such as how you agree and communicate this. How you arrange this in practice — fixed amount, meter reading or per consumption — you can read in the knowledge base on billing methods.
When does this affect a holiday park or campsite
With a park with a central boiler for multiple chalets, or a shared cooling system for a group of bungalows, the picture changes. There is indeed a shared installation, and the question becomes relevant whether, and how, you must be able to show per-unit insight and separate billing. That is also precisely what many parks struggle with when finalizing at the end of a season: not every meter cabinet is set up the same way, and not every unit has the same installation behind it. If you would like to see in a few questions how your situation roughly looks, you can do that via the selection tool that provides an indication in a few questions.
And if you only operate charging points
A charging point is generally not seen as part of a collective heating or cooling installation, and thus usually falls outside the scope of this specific legislation. That does not mean nothing applies: for charging points, other agreements apply, for example about who may charge and at what rate. You can read more about this on the pages about charging points in rentals.
What you can look into yourself
The exact text of the legislation, with the precise definitions of building and installation, can be found on EUR-Lex. If you want to know whether your specific situation falls under it, that is a question for a lawyer or the regulator in your country, not something we as a metering and billing platform can assess for you. We provide the technology to measure and bill per unit; we do not make a statement about what is mandatory in your case.
What Staywatt arranges for you
Whether or not the rule formally applies to you: many landlords want to be able to see exactly what has been consumed per property, per chalet or per charging point anyway. Our module turns every meter cabinet, and every charging point, into a separately measurable and separately billable object, each with its own QR code and its own rate. How that measurement works exactly and where the data comes from, you can read on the page that shows where the information comes from.
Are you uncertain whether your situation falls under a collective installation, or do you simply want to know how you can bill your guests and tenants more clearly? Do the free quick-scan or browse through the topics in the knowledge base — it costs you no account and no half hour of your day.