One degree Celsius in the apartment is worth six percent of the bill.
Consumers who have central heating will be able to use this service from this winter, that is, between the end of 2026 and the beginning of 2027, when about 70 percent of heating plants in Serbia will switch to "joint consumption metering".
The option could help those who are concerned about the announcements accounts that could be twice as large.
Dejan Stojanović from the Association of Heating Plants of Serbia tells "Vreme" that consumers are waiting for this winter new calculation of prices for central heating in most heating plants in the country, so those who want to reduce costs will be able to submit a request to the heating plants.
"If the housing association wants to reduce total costs, it can ask the supplier, that is, the heating plant, to reduce the total energy in the substation," Stojanović told "Vreme". "For every lower degree Celsius, you get a six percent reduction in bills. The same logic is for an increase in temperature, the bills will go up six percent per degree."
Stojanović adds that the deadline for the heating plant's response to the request to reduce or increase the temperature is prescribed by the Law on Consumer Protection, but that citizens can refer it only when the new calculation becomes operational.
What is the fairest payment method
Out of 60 heating plants in Serbia, only 18 currently charge for the service according to consumption. By next year, it is expected that 60 to 70 percent of them will switch to the new system, and among them are those in big cities like Belgrade. The Association of Heating Plants appeals to consumers that it is important to understand that the new system is not an individual consumption reading for each apartment, but common for one residential unit, that is, a building.
"In this first phase, we will read the joint consumption of a residential community and then we will divide the total consumption according to the number of square meters of tenants," Stojanović describes the calculation system that awaits citizens.
These are all, he adds, European Union directives on energy efficiency, which Serbia incorporates into its own Law on Energy Efficiency.
"We understand that citizens are used to their costs always being the same, but we need to understand that this is a system that will contribute to energy savings in the long term," says Stojanović. "And the European Union itself switched to it. We are 15 to 20 years behind new technologies. Also, all our lives we all pay for electricity and gas as much as we use, why not heating?"
(Non)solidary neighbors: We pay together or separately
The next phase that awaits us is an individual reading for each household, where the differences in bills could be even greater, and in some cases it will not depend only on the specific consumer, but also on external problems.
The countries of Europe have switched to billing according to consumption, but they have not fully agreed on which of the two systems should be applied - common reading for the entire building or individually per apartment.
The logic of the advocates of joint consumption is that the consumer should not suffer if his neighbors like to sit in the cold. Because, if everyone turns off the heating in the surrounding apartments, then the entire bill comes to only one customer, and he has to heat much more because he has a lot of common walls with his neighbors.
That is why the Slovenians switched to individual consumption measurement a long time ago, but ten years ago they adopted a correction of this decision, so they determined the minimum and maximum consumption. Finland and Sweden, on the other hand, completely rejected the individual division of consumption, which is considered a more solidary approach.
In Serbia, Šabac is one of the pioneer cities of consumption by consumption, first according to the common, then according to the individual model. There were a lot of problems with that, because citizens complained en masse about dizzying and inconsistent bills.
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