Summation Meters are linked to a Meter Account, and generally reflects the energy of that meter account.
It is most used for three situations:

1. Where multiple apportioning needs to occur, it can simplify the calculations by doing it in two steps instead of one, for example, the first meter account can calculate the remaining energy by subtracting metered tenants from the main incomer, and then this can be the Summation Meter. This meter can then be assigned to multiple other accounts for the other vendors, where the usage on the meter is divided amongst the shops based on their floor space (m2).
   
2. To optimize performance, in the case where a summation account includes more than 11 other meters. Since various screens dealing with a meter account will source the data from all component meters, profile graphs and bills can become slow when an excessive amount of meters are accessed per meter account. The Summation Meter is called in early in the morning and all the summated data inserted into its own meter data set, which means the Profile Graph and billing will only need to look at one meter when doing their processing, dramatically improving performance.
   
3. To represent a Metering Point: In the case where reports like the bench mark compares this year to last year's data, there is the concept of comparable and non-comparable data, for instance when a chain opens new stores and they need to see if they are saving energy, it can run the comparison mainly on the meters that already existed last year, giving you a clearer report for the current year. However, when replacing a meter in the same metering point, the report will think it is a store that has been closed and a new store that has opened, unless both the old and the new meter is summated together into a summation meter that represents the metering point, in which case the comparison of this year and last year's data will still be associated, even though it was two physical meters.