Source: Insajder
The citizens of Belgrade have been receiving different bills for heating for months, and from the upcoming heating season they will be expecting a completely new method of calculation. Instead of the previous, almost fixed price per square meter, the amount on the bill will increasingly depend on how much heat the building actually consumes. In this type of thermal energy charging system, the potential for savings in older buildings will have the entire residential community, not an individual, because the measuring instruments are located at the place where the “Belgrade Power Stations” deliver heat to the building, explained Aleksandar Macura from RES Foundation, as a guest on the show “3D – New Dimension of the Day” on Insajder TV.
“At this moment, the owner of an individual apartment cannot influence his bill by his behavior. The Serbian legislation left open the possibility, did not prescribe an obligation, to switch to measurement at the apartment level where possible. In the existing separation systems in old buildings, this is almost impossible. It is feasible, but it is too expensive and will not happen,” said Macura.
As Insajder’s interlocutor emphasizes, several tens of percent of apartments in Belgrade gradually switched to consumption-based billing last season, so there is some experience with that. He adds that the data shows that, although tenants switched to consumption-based billing at the beginning of the heating season, they noticed some changes not before February and March of the following year.
“Their costs in the 2025-2026 heating season were approximately equal to the costs they had when billing was per square meter. This is actually expected, because “Belgrade Power Stations” first introduced into the billing system exactly those buildings for which they expected their costs to be approximately the same,” he said.
Since consumption in older buildings is not measured at the level of individual apartments, but at the level of the entire building, our interlocutor advises citizens.
“What consumers can do, which is not at all simple, is to look at their possibilities to improve the energy properties of the building they live in at the level of the residential community. This does not apply to new buildings. New buildings have a different system. It is possible to have a calorimeter there and it is mandatory by law at the level of the apartment, so the measurement is completely there—therefore, management and measurement is at the level of the apartment,” explained Macura.
Today, the measurement is carried out in the substation, that is, at the level of the building, so that information about consumption arrives for the entire building.
“Currently, the consumption is measured at the substation, and that consumption is distributed according to the square meters of each apartment. And that’s how we will pay the bills in the future. If thermostatic valves were installed on each radiator, and on each radiator there is a device called a heat distributor, it would be possible to distribute the consumption among the apartments,” explained Macura.
The public also mentioned a new item on the bill – installed power. However, Insajder’s interlocutor points out that this is an item that citizens already have on their bills and against which they most often protest at “Elektroprivreda Srbije”.
He adds that there are about 1,600 kilometers of district heating system pipes in Belgrade and that there are real costs for their maintenance, for installing boilers, for employees.
“It should not increase the total costs, because in the calculation of the total costs of the Belgrade Power Stations, that cost existed before. What is new and what has changed is the way that cost is expressed, the way we see it on the bill. We have been used to calculating the cost of district heating in the same way for decades, and this change will probably confuse people at first, but basically this is not a new cost and it should not affect the increase in the total costs of the system,” he explained.
The entire method of charging by consumption, as our interlocutor points out, comes from the legislation of the European Union, from the Energy Efficiency Directive, which long ago prescribed that some kind of measurement must be used to calculate the heat energy consumed.
“The vast majority of Belgrade citizens will not see a big increase in their bills, I’m talking about when looking at the period of one year. Some will certainly see a significant increase in their bills compared to those who paid before, 30, 40, 50 percent, I can’t say, but that number shouldn’t be large. What I would like citizens to know is that there is a possibility to get previous data on measurements from Belgrade Power Stations, because although the billing was not based on consumption, according to my understanding, measurements in so that people could look at the historical consumption of their buildings and with a little, let’s say, skills and with the help of a calculator, they could estimate what their future bills will look like in November, December, January, and especially in February and March 2027, which will probably be the biggest bills for those who enter the system this year,” concluded Aleksandar Macura from RES Foundation.