Determining the maximum and minimum cost of heat delivered in the heating season to an apartment equipped with heating costs divisors

Abstract

The regulation of the Minister of Climate and Environment published in December 2021 “on the conditions for determining the technical feasibility and profitability of using heat meters, heating cost allocators and water meters for measuring domestic hot water, the conditions for choosing the method of settling the costs of heat purchase and the scope of information contained in individual settlements” specifies, inter alia, the scope of information on the settlement of heat purchase costs provided to users of flats in a multi-apartment building, supplied with heat, cooling or domestic hot water from a central heat source. Two critical requirements resulting from the above-mentioned Regulation are to determine and specify the value of the maximum and minimum variable cost of heat purchase depending on its consumption for a given flat during the heating season, with the legislator only specifying these concepts in a general way, without indicating and not providing the methodology for determining them. In particular, the determination of the value of the maximum variable cost of heat purchase may pose problems. The Regulation in question (§ 8 point 1) states only that “the maximum variable cost of heat purchase is calculated as the value of heat consumption for a given flat resulting from the technical possibility of heat supply to the flats”. The article proposes two methods for determining the maximum and minimum cost of heat taken during the heating season by a flat equipped with heat cost allocators. An analysis of the value of the maximum cost at the variables of heat purchase for an existing real building was determined and carried out.