heating & renewable energy 47
Ignoring heat network metering is an expensive mistake
Cost-cutting on heat metering at the installation stage can be a false economy, but there are ways to avoid the pitfalls, as Anthony Coates-Smith of Insite Energy explains.
factors that will make site maintenance and run- ning expenses much higher. Nowhere is this false economy more apparent than in the specification and installation of heating systems and networks. Unnecessary financial pain can be experienced
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as a result of early cost-cutting decisions to agree restrictive contracts with the providers of heat metering, billing and payment services, as well as from poorly designed systems and from cheaply acquired equipment such as heat interface units and meters. These mistakes can be seen too often, typically when receiving requests to retrofit metering and billing systems to rectify previous mistakes made. A common problem is that decisions about
metering technology are taken by people with insufficient technical and operational knowledge. The risk is that they’ll get the building owner tied
hen housebuilders and developers strive to minimise initial construction costs, they can sometimes overlook
up for years with a metering, billing and payment provider that looks good on paper but limits the choice of billing type and/or meter technology. It’s too easy to end up with a system the construction team likes but the end operator vehemently dislikes. Or, worse still, a system that’s not even fit for purpose. Because a low-efficiency heat network will cost
significantly more to operate, the additional costs typically have to be covered in one of two ways. One approach is to charge residents more, which from a social and political point of view is inadvisable and open to the risk of significant reputational damage. The alternative, if the additional energy costs are not passed on to or recovered from customers, is for the building owner to endure lost revenue. By failing to install systems that are fit for
purpose, owners of residential housing (often housing associations) expose themselves to debt risk from customers who don’t want to pay, or tie
themselves into suppliers’ services that are so expensive they enrage residents. In contrast, where high quality metering solutions are used, resident complaints tend to disappear and it has been shown that tariffs can be reduced from around seven pence to as little as three pence per kilowatt of heat. Choosing the right provider of heat network
metering and billing services is easier than some suppliers would have you believe, but beware what you’re told. There are metering suppliers out there who proclaim that their systems are ‘open protocol’ and can be used in any circumstance, but this is often not the case. There are also suppliers who aim to convince developers that there are no open protocol transferable products available, and that a specific meter product will require one supplier to operate it, but this is misleading. In fact, there are a handful of products for
pay-as-you-go metering that are genuinely transferable and can be used by more than one
respond online at
www.hbdonline.co.uk
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