Leveraging the revised metering and billing regs to deliver excellent heat network performance
What is the best strategy for dealing with the revised metering and billing regulations?
What does it mean for housing associations and their residents?
According to the BEIS Heat networks metering cost effectiveness user guide, housing associations that need to fit a metering and billing package to comply will require a budget of £389 per unmetered connection to fit the compliant hardware. Additionally, BEIS estimates that the ongoing cost of the metering and billing service stands at £92 per year per dwelling. However, this does not cover the all the costs related to the compliance.
For example, how much will it cost your organisation to carry out the assessment? What about tendering and project management of deployment?
If this is onerous and costly, the option of working with a supplier, such as Minibems, is available and we can work with you to complete the assessment and provide comprehensive costings. You can then make the right investment decision.
Leverage the revised regs to deliver excellent heat network performance
Given this significant investment there is a real opportunity to leverage that investment to ensure greater value beyond metering and billing compliance.
Why not build-in continuous energy savings and reduced maintenance into the investment and translate into lower heating bills for residents, lower carbon emissions across the heat network portfolio and a more reliable service all round?
If your organisation owns or operates communal or district heating networks then you need to ensure that you continue to notify as per the 2014 regulations as well as applying a metering and billing package (unless a building falls into the exempt category).
For many of the unmetered heat networks, the regulations require that heat network owners conduct a cost effectiveness assessment to determine the type and cost of system that needs to be in place on their existing heat networks. This assessment must be submitted by November 2021.
By September 2022, heat network owners across the U.K. will have to ensure that all their existing sites comply with the latest metering and billing regulations.
The situation with new builds is straightforward, all require metering and billing unless exempt.
However, there are three classes of buildings under the new regulations:
Viable
- Which require metering and billing. This includes all newly operational heat networks (not included in the exempt category) from November 27th 2020 onwards.
Open
- Which requires a cost effectiveness assessment to be carried out.
This assessment calculates whether the estimated savings from deploying a metering and billing package are sufficiently large enough to cover the costs of fitting the package as well as the ongoing service charges.
Exempt
- Here are a range of heat network types that are exempt, for example sheltered housing.
Minibems wants to help owners of new build and existing heat networks comply with existing metering and billing regulations and move towards delivering excellent performance consistently.
How do we define excellence in heat network performance?
It is full compliance and by adopting the Minibems suite of Connected Service. Minibems is the U.K.’s most advanced Enterprise IoT heat network management platform which includes:
- Minipay for flexible and comprehensive metering and billing
- Dynamic real-time flow control
- Telematic remote monitoring and maintenance triage
All of this comes with future-proofed connected software, with granular and meaningful reporting that integrates with a managed service, focused on continuous improvement.
Latest news
Minibems delivers equivalent carbon savings to converting a petrol car to an electric car, for twenty times less capital cost
Reducing our carbon footprint is typically an expensive task requiring extensive capital investment. However installing Minibems onto a heat network typically saves 1 tonne of carbon, per annum, for every apartment it’s fitted into.
Minibems can reduce residents heat tariffs by as much as 22 pence per kWh
With gas prices soaring the opportunity for real and tangible cost savings on heat networks has never been greater.
Cut the carbon in your heat network today
Minibems can cut an average of 1 tonne of carbon emissions per home per annum – saving you money too. By controlling each apartment with our unique and patented Dynamic flow control system we achieve the savings by optimising flow rates through your HIU.
Cut your heat network costs with Minibems
As finance managers across the UK know, managing budgets is a weekly challenge during these unprecedented times for energy price hikes. This isn’t just bad news for those in charge of managing operational budgets for heat networks, it’s also bad news for families.
Interested in finding out how we can optimise your heat network?