Are you feeling warm? - Heating per consumption neither starts next season nor brings smaller bills

These days, when the temperature outside was above 12 degrees, radiators were cold or mildly warm. Majority of flats need heating at that time so citizens must use additional electrical heating. Although in the middle of heating season there is no heating, the Infostan bill will not decrease.

For the next year, the Ministry of Energy is announcing new district heating payment method so that citizens could use it as much as they want. Namely, in next heating season, the amount spent will be the amount paid.

The system of heating plants which will this way get additional work due to measuring as well as citizens who will have additional costs are not ready for the big step. Therefore, the heating payment based on consumption will be implemented partially.

Combinations

Although the Ministry of Energy announced that all households connected to district heating system, as of January 2015, will have to install calorimeters, it seems that next season citizens will not pay heating based on consumption.

Director of the Directorate for energy of Belgrade, Marko Stojanovic, said that the capital with the biggest company for district heating in the Balkans and consumer base of 300.000 flats and 10.000 companies is still not ready for consumption-based heating payment.

(Marko Stojanovic)

As the director of the Directorate for energy explained, this means that during six warm months, consumers will get only fixed costs which are significantly lower than current monthly bills and during six winter months, they will get „averaged bill in line with the delivered heat in substation“.

- Square meter will remain a unit but it will depend on consumption measured in substation in a building– he said, adding that annual amount which is paid should not change.

Aleksandar Macura, an independent energy consultant, thinks that the main problem of district heating in Serbia is a high price of generated heat from heavy oil and natural gas and that the measuring will not change it.

- The Law on efficient energy consumption implies only an obligation that measuring is carried out in all delivery points (substations) and for every facility. The Law does not oblige anybody to have an individual measuring. Measuring at the level of a facility is possible and wanted and terms to implement it have been achieved. It will also cause certain problems. If in a short or mid-term period of time there is no decrease in unit heat production price, district heating systems in Serbia will not be able to survive regardless of the method of calculation or regulation – Macura explains in his interview for eKapija.

(Photo: Ivana Vuksa)

Our collocutor says that measuring at the level of a building can provide some incentives for savings but he points out that the question of social sustainability in that case is critical and raises the question of other competitive heating technologies.

- For an unknown reason, the focus is on measuring instead of on heat production costs decrease. Every consultant would at this moment advise cities and municipalities, where studies for biomass-driven heating have been done, to introduce biomass in district heating and not to switch to consumption-based consumption.

Higher bills?

Aleksandar Macura thinks that citizens generally are not ready to pay bills for district heating based on consumption and they have smaller number of options to pay any kind of bills.

The Directorate for Energy agrees that payment in heating plants would decrease with the new system implementation.

(Aleksandar Macura)

Aleksandar Macura reminds that liberalization of the electricity market leaves an option to offer more favorable heating options to households with better social standard and office space which also endangers system survival.

Dejan Stojanovic, a council member at the Agency for energy said that the experience showed that it is necessary to work on change of conscious and habits when it comes to district heating. As he said, it happens that users spend two times more energy when they have an option of payment “based on wish”.

- Consumption-based payment does not imply cheaper heating. A large number of buildings does not have insulation or adequate doors and windows. Installation of measuring-regulation equipment does not make sense unless we change habits. It turned out that flats with an option of individual measuring do not generate savings – Dejan Stojanovic said for eKapija.

Those who bought a flat in new buildings and have gas heating are satisfied because they pay per consumption and they say it is always warm.

- In a flat of 42 square meters we pay RSD 6000 on the average while fixed part totals up to RSD 300 - Marija Pavlovic who lives in a new flat in Zvezdara municipality.

As an advisor in the Oil and gas department, Ksenija Milankovic, said at CEDEF meeting that it is necessary to prepare consumers for this change by providing them an example of a bill in a new system on the back of the bill they receive. The ideal moment to move to a new system is during the summer months when only smaller amount of fiscal costs will be paid because this way, citizens will get a more positive attitude about this change.

However, according to the Directorate for energy and the Agency for energy, in the next 5 to 10 years, not before that, along with the buildings energy efficiency improvement, real consumption-based payment system will be implemented.

Suzana Obradovic