Equalbase: Portfolio-Wide Energy Monitoring Across Penang and Johor Warehouses

Equalbase runs four warehouses in two Malaysian states from one platform. CobiNeural brings energy monitoring, maximum demand tracking, tenant billing, water metering and air-quality monitoring for V1 and V2 in Penang and ES103 Warehouse 1 and 2 in Iskandar, Johor into a single view.

The site

Equalbase operates industrial and logistics warehouses: V1 and V2 in Penang, and ES103 Warehouse 1 and 2 in Iskandar, Johor. The space is leased to tenants including Shopee. Equalbase therefore does more than consume energy. As the landlord, it has to recover energy cost fairly from the businesses using its floor space.

A spread-out portfolio with tenants to bill is a different problem from a single site. Each warehouse has its own Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB) supply and its own maximum demand, and runs its own mix of lighting, ventilation, dock equipment and tenant load. Four buildings in two states meant four separate cost centres, four billing cycles and no common way to compare one site with another.

The problem

Each warehouse was metered separately, with no view across the portfolio. A team in one state could not see how a building in the other was performing, or tell whether a spike at one site was normal.

Tenant billing was manual and slow. Recovering energy cost meant reading meters, reconciling figures by hand and issuing invoices after the fact. Manual allocation is prone to errors, hard to defend when a tenant questions a charge, and a burden on the finance and facilities teams every cycle.

Peak demand at each site was not managed. Under TNB's maximum demand tariff, the single highest 30-minute demand interval in a month sets a charge, whether or not that peak happens again. Across four buildings, every unmanaged peak added cost, and nobody could see the peaks forming in time to act.

What we did

CobiNeural brings every warehouse into one portfolio. It runs as an overlay on the existing meters rather than replacing them, pulling sub-metered data from each site into one platform. V1, V2 and both ES103 buildings are visible side by side.

• Insights to Energy tracks consumption, power factor and the Max Demand KPI (key performance indicator) at every site. Operators watch maximum demand build during the billing period instead of discovering it on the TNB bill, which gives each warehouse time to act on a peak.
• Billing and Tariffs turns sub-metered readings into tenant cost allocation. Energy is billed from actual consumption against the correct tariff, so charges to tenants such as Shopee are accurate, repeatable and defensible.
• Dashboards give a portfolio view across sites. A manager can compare Penang and Johor on one screen and spot the outlier without logging into four systems.
• Alerts sends surge and anomaly notifications by WhatsApp or email, so an abnormal draw at any site reaches the right person while it can still be dealt with.
• Insights → Water meters water consumption across the portfolio. Water use is tracked and trended alongside energy instead of being read by hand, and a landlord can allocate it back to tenants where relevant.

If a site later needs equipment control rather than alerts to manage its peaks, that would be an automation project built on top of the existing building management system (BMS), programmable logic controllers (PLC) or SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) system, not a replacement for it.

Air-quality monitoring for stored goods

A warehouse is also judged on the condition of the goods inside it. CobiNeural's Insights → IAQ module monitors indoor air quality (IAQ) at each site, covering temperature, humidity and CO2. Equalbase can show that storage conditions stay within the range its tenants' goods require.

If humidity rises towards the level where condensation, mould or corrosion could damage stock, the team sees it as a trend and can act before a damaged-goods claim. The same alerting used for energy anomalies notifies the team when a zone moves out of range, and every reading is logged for reporting. For a landlord, air quality becomes evidence it can show a tenant rather than an assumption.

What changed

• Equalbase manages the whole portfolio from one platform and sees every warehouse in one place.
• Tenants are billed from actual consumption instead of manual meter readings.
• Maximum demand is watched at every site during the month, rather than discovered on the bill.

For a landlord recovering energy cost across several buildings and tenants, four separate meters have become one operating picture: consistent data, accurate invoices and demand that is visible before it becomes a charge. See how other operators run portfolio energy, or request a demo to see portfolio monitoring on your own sites.