Short answer: it depends on how your rental is structured, not on how many properties you own. If you rent out a single holiday home with its own meter, the key question is whether you resell energy to your guest yourself. If you rent out multiple units on one plot with one main connection, an additional layer comes into play concerning sub-metering: separately measuring consumption within a building that has only one connection to the grid.
The regulation this article addresses comes from European energy efficiency legislation and concerns the right of an end-user to timely, understandable information about their own consumption. For a holiday park with multiple chalets on one main meter, or a B&B with separate guest rooms, that is a different question than for a landlord with one independent property and its own connection from the energy company.
Why this rule exists
The thinking behind the rule is simple: someone who consumes energy can use electricity more efficiently if they see in good time and in understandable language what they consume and what it costs. For households, that is the connection from the energy supplier itself. For buildings with multiple units behind one main meter — think of a holiday park, a multi-unit building, or a campsite with rental units — it is less straightforward, because the energy supplier sees only one customer there: the owner of the main connection. The rule fills that gap by also requiring clarity about individual consumption within such a building, under conditions that vary by situation.
When this is likely to affect you
The likelihood that this regulation is relevant to you is greater when you manage multiple rental units that all sit on one main connection, when you yourself determine what the guest pays for electricity, and when a form of sub-metering already exists or would be technically straightforward to introduce. Holiday parks and campsites with multiple chalets often recognize this pattern most quickly, because the park's main meter receives one invoice while guests want to settle separately.
When it is likely not relevant
If you rent out a single holiday home with its own separate connection to the grid, you are already the end-user with your own contract and your own meter as far as the energy company is concerned. The question then shifts less to this specific European regulation and more to how you yourself settle with your guest — a topic that is knowledge base with explanations per situation covered separately. Occasional rental, such as a single room next to your own home, likewise typically falls outside the focus of this rule, simply because there is no building with multiple independent units behind one main meter.
What is expected of you in practice
Where the regulation is deemed to apply, it mainly concerns two things: that a guest or tenant can see their own consumption, and that they are informed about it within a reasonable timeframe rather than only months later in a year-end settlement. A system that displays consumption in real time — as most sub-metering solutions for holiday parks do — aligns well with that in principle, but whether your specific setup fully complies with the regulation is something the regulation itself describes and what a lawyer or the competent supervisory authority assesses on a case-by-case basis.
The finer detail, for those who want to comply
The underlying text distinguishes between buildings with a connection for heating or cooling via a shared network on the one hand, and separate electricity connections on the other hand, and between existing and newly installed systems. It also examines the technical and financial feasibility of installing individual meters in an existing building. These nuances are contained in the official regulatory text on EUR-Lex; for the exact location and precise wording, that is the source to refer to, not a summary such as this one.
How you verify this for yourself
The fastest way to see if your situation comes close to this rule is to look at three things: the number of rental units behind one main meter, who according to your energy supplier is the contractual party, and whether you already invoice guests or tenants separately. If you want to work through this in a structured way, the selection tool with a few short questions guides you through it in a few steps, and in the frequently asked questions about metering and billing you will find an overview of similar cases of doubt. For the question of how Staywatt itself measures and what data is involved, the page on where the measurement data comes from is a logical next step.
If you still have doubts after reading whether this affects your situation, that is completely normal: the rule was written for buildings and not for business models, and the practice of holiday rentals does not always fit into it one-to-one. Feel free to do the free quick-scan or browse through the other topics in the knowledge base to see which question comes closest to your own situation.