Nedelya SK (Petropavlovsk) issue No.29 (628), July 16, 2010. 
Heat Accounting

When thermometer stem does not go below 25°С it does not seem of current concern to think of winter snowstorms and cold winds, but, in opinion of “North Kazakhstan Power Center” LLP, now is the time to take care of the “sledge”, which, as one well-known saying states “should be get ready for winter in summer time”.  

In accordance with the law, all consumers of services provided by natural monopolies should have instrument gages or metering instruments for water, electricity and heat accounting purposes.  Payment for supplied heat makes major part of public utility services in winter time. In this respect, installation of special metering instruments will allow for consumers both private and corporate to save substantial funds. Installed meters will allow for private consumers to pay for public utility services based on the actually supplied services and for corporate customers – to use its production capacity more efficiently. 

Speaking in terms of precise data, based on the information collected by “SevKazEnergo” JSC, average heating tariff for five-storey apartment buildings in the last year  heating season was 51.23 tenge per a square meter; for three-storey apartment buildings such heating tariff was equal to 58.61 tenge per a square meter; occupants of nine-storey apartment buildings paid 48.28 tenge per a square meter, while heating tariff for ten-storey apartment buildings was 51.23 tenge. At the same time, the standard basic tariff was 72.56 tenge.  

At the current moment, only 40% of Petropavlovsk buildings are equipped with heat metering instruments from amongst which 322 heat meters have been installed in private houses and 227 heat meters have been installed in apartment buildings. 

Despite many requests by “SevKazEnergo” LLP to chairmen of Apartment Owners Cooperative, so far only five of such cooperatives showed willingness to install heat metering devices.