The Chinese are neophytes on the consumption scale.

Some keep the water in landlord's name and build it into the rent based on historic usage, and hope that water consumption is not too excessive over the historic usage.

Another example, in a multi-family building there will typically be a single water meter, hence landlord pays the water bill; tenant family size can increase and subsequently water consumption increases with a corresponding increase in water bill to the landlord - no matter what CPI is doing.

If there is no way to throttle, how can i monitor the energy consumption from each tenant? 

So RUBS will not cut down total consumption IMHO.With RUBS, allocation is based more or less on square footage.

Solar properties are far more sensitive to consumption because the equipment costs so damn much.

For one, I have a good system, and therefore the management side of things is really low in the time consumption area.

Refinancing out principal-pay-down and equity appreciation is also a common tax free way to generate lumpy income for further investment or consumption.

We then get billed that $4100 balance.Something was up, we didn't just increase our monthly water consumption by 4,000% all willy nilly. 

If so, what specific device do you use to monitor the consumption?