Automated Energy Monitoring in Retail: The Example of Las Arenas Shopping Center

Las Arenas Shopping Center in Barcelona is more than just an iconic landmark—it’s a bustling hub with over 100 shops, 10 million visitors annually, and more than 106,000 square meters of retail space. But managing energy consumption across such a vast and complex facility posed a serious operational challenge. 

MERLIN Properties, the real estate giant behind Las Arenas, needed a smarter way to monitor utilities, reduce inefficiencies, and streamline operations. The solution came from Spacewell Energy’s Partner JustaEnergia. Here’s how, together, they transformed energy performance with a tech-driven approach to Energy Monitoring in Retail.

The Challenge: Manual Energy Readings and Inconsistent Data 

Each shop and establishment within the shopping center has its own policies in relation to the brand, its values and sustainability. In this case, the energy challenge was to manage and collect consumption from more than 100 locations to process the bills. 

Water meter readings for these shops were a problem, as the connections were not working properly and had to be done manually each month, one by one. 

For this reason, Las Arenas sought a solution to speed up the metering of the meters and improve their energy efficiency.  

With more than 100 utility meters across shops, water systems, HVAC, and shared services, the facility management team had to read each one manually, store by store, every month. These manual readings were: 

• Time-consuming 

• Prone to human error 

• Incompatible with real-time performance goals 

MERLIN Properties needed a scalable, remote monitoring solution to centralize energy data, automate processes, and support decision-making across the entire shopping center. 

The Solution: Automated Energy Monitoring in Retail 

JustaEnergia upgraded the metering infrastructure by installing over 200 smart meters, including: 

• 180 water meters 

• 31 thermal meters 

• 30 electrical analyzers 

• 1 gas meter 

All equipment was connected via Ethernet and integrated into the Spacewell Energy Platform using standard protocols like MBus and ModBus for real-time data capture. 

The facility team gained: 

• Real-time visibility of energy usage 

• Remote access via VPN for immediate issue resolution 

• Automated anomaly detection 

• Seamless simulation of monthly billing 

Key Results: From Manual Labor to Intelligent Energy Automation 

The shift to Spacewell Energy delivered immediate and long-term value for Las Arenas: helping the facilities team to monitor real-time energy data and save time in manual readings, reducing errors in reporting. With the energy dashboards and reports, the management of all locations from a single source has helped the standardization of reporting across tenants and the identification of deviations early to find solutions. 

The platform also supported compliance with ISO 50001 and ISO 14001 standards, accelerating certification timelines thanks to accurate documentation of the processes and standardized data. 

This case highlights how shopping centers—and retail real estate as a whole—can use energy intelligence to modernize operations, lower costs, and improve performance at scale.