How to read a common-area electricity bill

A condo common-area electricity bill in the Klang Valley usually mixes carpark lighting with lifts, pumps, and other loads. A higher RM on a later month is not automatically a lighting failure. This page does not publish TNB tariff rates, because those change.

What is actually on the invoice?

Committees often receive one total for the common areas. The line you can read is money and usage for that account. The line you usually cannot read is “carpark lighting only”. Lifts keep running when the carpark is quiet. Pumps do not follow visitor hours. Lighting is one slice of the same bill.

That is why the public condo band is up to about 20% of lighting-related electricity, not 20% of the invoice. The full reading is condo carpark electricity for JMB / MC.

Why did the RM go up?

Three ordinary causes get confused in the same meeting.

• The tariff changed, so the same usage costs more. That is not a lighting project.
• Another load on the account grew: plant, lifts, or longer hours elsewhere in the common area.
• The carpark fittings stayed at full output through empty hours. That one is a lighting question, and it still needs a site survey.

Do not pick the third because it is the only one a lighting company can talk about. Label the figure you have. If it is the whole common-area total, call it that. If the question is the fittings left at full output, how they dim is on the solution page.

How should the committee use the RM?

Bring a recent month as a sense-check, not as a quotation. The bill sense-check asks you to say whether the RM is the whole common-area bill or already the lighting amount. We will not turn bay count into an RM savings line, and we will not treat a bill total as if it were already the lighting slice. What to attach is listed in what a JMB should bring to an assessment.

The illustrative pair of bills on the assessment page is a composite. It is not a named building and not yours unless the numbers happen to match. Do not copy those figures into your own minutes.

What should you copy off the bill, and what should you leave?

Copy the month, the RM, and the account name. If the bill shows a usage unit, copy that too, and do not convert it into a lighting percentage yourself. Leave off any handwritten split that is not on the invoice. A treasurer’s pencil note that “half is lighting” is a belief. Send it only if you label it as a belief.

Compare two months only when you can say whether the tariff or the usage changed. A higher RM with the same usage is a price story. A higher RM with higher usage is a load story, and the load may still not be the carpark. This page will not give you the current TNB rate to finish that sum. Rates move, and a stale rate would make a precise sentence that is wrong.

Where the public band is allowed to touch the bill

Only after you know which RM is lighting-related. Until then, the band stays in a separate sentence: up to about 20% for a typical condo, on the lighting slice, estimate only. Putting the percentage into the invoice total is the mistake the rest of this site is written to stop. Office and mall bands do not get a special exception because their bills are larger.

What can go in a meeting note?

You can say the common-area account rose, you can say you do not yet know how much of it is lighting, and you can say the public band is lighting-related and estimate only. You should not say the building will save a percentage of the invoice. Wording for a pack is in what belongs in an AGM paper. A site survey is required before any number is a proposal. We reply from info@carparklight.com.