Residents Belgrade which use central heating bigger bills are likely to await this winter. The reason for this is not only the announced increase in the price of services, but a new way of calculating heating consumption. Even the company Beostan, which deals with building maintenance and hiring professional managers, does not know how "more expensive" it will be, which shared this information with the public, writes Katarina Pantelić for The new economy.
"Do you know how much heating will cost you this December? We don't know the exact figure, but we know that the bill can be twice as high as last year. Starting this year, the heating calculation system has changed. There is no longer a fixed price, now you pay according to actual consumption and it depends directly on how cold the winter is, i.e. on the collective consumption of your building." quotes from Beostan on social media.
New item on invoices
A new item on the bill called "installed power" will be paid throughout the year. As they state, when the heating season starts, a consumption item in the amount of 9,03 dinars per kilowatt hour is added and until the first heating season passes and the actual numbers are not seen, "no one can tell you exactly how much you will pay the bill".
"So be smart and save money in the amount of at least one or two bills in advance," the video notes.
If the user belongs to the category of households, the public utility company "Infostan tehnologije" (www.infostan.rs) is responsible for billing for thermal energy and hot water consumption in Belgrade.
Photo: Vesna Lalić/Nova.rsAccount for Infostan
Thermal energy is paid every month, throughout the year, for residential space, and for garages only during the heating season, which lasts from October 15 to April 15. In buildings that have a common area within the building (laundry rooms, common rooms, etc.) that are heated, the fee is increased in proportion to the ratio of the area of the common area to the total area of the apartments in the building.
"Beogradske elektrane" is responsible for the billing of the supplied thermal energy in the business premises.
The new economy contacted Belgrade Power Plants with the intention of finding out exactly how billing will be done, how much the bill would be for an apartment of a certain square footage, why the heating calculation method was changed, and the like, but by the time this text was published, the answers had not arrived.
Citizens have been receiving various bills for several months
Dejan Stojanović from the Association of Heating Plants tells Nova Ekonomija that such a system of charging for heating should have been introduced a long time ago, and that the whole of Europe charges for heating according to consumption.
As he says, in the substations there are ultrasonic meters that read the consumption for the entire facility. That amount of energy that has been measured (consumed) is divided by the total heated area and multiplied by the number of square meters for each apartment (depending on the square footage of the apartment). Thus, consumers receive different bills for heating.
"In this way, budgeted energy is obtained for each apartment. Another thing is that there are buildings where there are also individual cost dividers, that is, allocators that are installed on radiators and through them the so-called individual division is done," Stojanović said.
Citizens of Belgrade complain that they have been receiving heating bills for several months, the amount of which varies from month to month.
For example, one of the residents of Belgrade received a bill from "Infostan" in January for an area of about 70 square meters - from 9.900 dinars, in February 12.000 dinars, in March 17.600, in April 20.900 dinars, while in May it was reduced to 13.200 dinars.
Stojanović explains this difference in price by the fact that the price of heating per square meter is calculated on the basis of average consumption and adds that those who received lower or higher bills are awaiting correction during the winter.
"Belgrade power plants announced last year that they would start with this method of calculation. When you divide all the energy produced, you get an absolute average, but every building within that gets more or less, and some even the same amount of energy. Šabac has been charging for heating that way since 2010," he said.
As he points out, since then it happened that a third of the population that has central heating in the city received identical bills every month, that a third received higher bills, while the rest received less than before.
Photo: Darko Pavlović/FoNetWinter in Belgrade
It all depends on the age of the building, external insulation and the like.
Billing by consumption, as he points out, has been going through the legal traffic of Serbia since 2015, and it is the first step in order to move towards the regulation of energy efficiency measures later on.
Source: New Economy
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