Standing Charge

Tettie

We live in a block of 19 apartments, all sharing one gas boiler and all paying a standing charge on top of our regular gas bill, charged at 5%, which can equate to around £100 per year per apartment, is this right?

[Deleted User]

By the sound of it you are on a District Heating Scheme which sits outwith the regulations for the normal domestic supply of gas. Part of what you pay goes towards maintaining and replacing the heating system. Normal homeowners have to pay to have their boilers serviced etc. FWiW, a standing charge of £100 per year is not unreasonable.

JJ_Egan

27p  a day can be found as Standing Charge on some normal gas or electric accounts .

BeerSavesMoney

Tettie said:

We live in a block of 19 apartments, all sharing one gas boiler and all paying a standing charge on top of our regular gas bill, charged at 5%, which can equate to around £100 per year per apartment, is this right?

I’m currently renting a flat in a similar situation where we are free to switch electricity providers but heating and hot water is provided through a central boiler. We currently pay 0.4507p per day and 0.0165p per kWh. 

However they state that:

Heat Efficiency Factor: The Heat and Hot Water use that is measured by your meter is generated using gas powered boilers and a network of pipes to distribute to your apartment. As with any heating system, there is an efficiency loss when converting gas into heat. We are using 57% based on 12 months of performance on site. We divide metered units by 0.57, so for every 100 kWh of heat measured on your meter, you will be billed 175 kWh.

So really a kWh is 0.0290p that is if I did the maths right!

I don’t know if your scheme is similar but it doesn’t seem that bad when you take into account servicing etc. The only downside is you are stuck with the rates they give you and can’t swap suppliers.

Edit: Forgot to add that there is 5% VAT on top of those rates.

btr30

So you are paying around 3p/KWh and 45p/day SC.
A bit more expensive than current market rates for gas , but you have no capital outlay on boiler and no ongoing maintenance costs, so seems pretty reasonable to me

[Deleted User]

I thought that the premise behind District Heating Schemes is that they offer greater efficiency than individual boilers. A boiler running at 57% efficiency is less efficient than one installed 30 years ago. It would interesting to know how they measure it?

QrizB

I don't know any details of the OP's scheme but if the metering is done at the flat there will be losses getting the heat there from the boiler room. Most of these losses are likely to be into the fabric of the apartment block so they will still be providing heat to the block as a whole.

It's also possible that deliberate heat to communal areas (halls, lobbies etc.) is treated as a "loss" when calculating that 57% efficiency number.

Tettie

Thank you for comments, we moved in here 5 years ago, new, told it was a Scandinavian heating system, very economical, no need to have the interfaces serviced for five years, seems that was wrong, it should have been serviced after 2 years, just paid for the service, specialised company, apparently the shared boiler now needs replacing, the apartment owners pay, unfortunately, we haven’t got the costs as yet, but the comments saying no maintenance or boiler charges are wrong, the leaseholder is passing it on to the owners.  Obviously the owners are questioning the charges,