Today I got my heating bill for the last year. It always infuriates me. People, who know me, know I usually wear shorts, and I don’t mind if it’s chilly. For the sake of my computers, which don’t particularly like it too cold, I leave a bit of heat on, but I have had readings of 0 heat units in an entire year from several of my radiators.
Fig. 1 is a picture of my heating bill for June 2008 – May 2009. At the top we see that my estimated expense was DKK 3,048, but I only used for DKK 2,710.13, so i get DKK 337.87 back. So far so good.
Then the specification of the DKK 2,710.13. First 8 room units of hot water, a total of DKK 911.60. This is calculated a one kitchen faucet (3 units), one bath room faucet (1 unit), one shower (2 units), and two rooms (2 units). This completely disregards that I rarely use warm water from faucets and I live alone, so my water consumption is way less that a family of 4 (which also only gets to pay 2 units for their shower). I even took measures to use less warm water. For example, my dishwasher is able to use warm or cold water and heat it using electricity (which is metered and paid individually), but I plugged it to the cold pipe regardless, because the manual said it was more energy efficient (and I’m usually not a person, who thinks about that). Stupid of me. I also fixed the leaking faucet by my own expense even though it would have cost me nothing not to (the sound was rather annoying though). So I had expenses to cut down on my warm water use, but that is not reflected.
Next up is the heat division number, which is measured depending on the size of my apartment (65 m2 for a total of DKK 904.15). Apparently, I have to pay something for heat “just because”. That’s another great fuck you from the socialists, and a big “don’t conserve heat, stupid”. I realize that heating an apartment when the floors above and below you are heated may be cheaper, but sharing 30% of the heating expenses just because of that seems stupid and makes people less likely to conserve heat.
Then the floor heating, 4 m2 (the size of my bathroom). This, I guess, is more or less fair. Apparently, it is impossible or too expensive to meter this and I honestly have no idea how to turn it up nor down. Most likely some retirees will find out how to turn it up to heat to 32ºC, but they’re going to die soon anyway, so I don’t really care. Anyway, that’s only DKK 112.32, and I can live with that for nice hot feet in the winter.
Finally, the actual metered usage, 600 units for DKK 1.30343 a pop. This is the only expense I can really alter. It’s obviously less than anticipated; one would guess that the anticipated value would be DKK 1,119.93 (= DKK 782.06 + DKK 337.87). That is, I use around 30% less than average. Yet, my saving is only around 11%. That’s not only not fair, it’s also stupid. Say, in the winter, I like fresh air and I like that all my rooms are 30ºC. Suppose, this doubles my energy consumption. That is, instead of using 600 units, I use 1200 units (also, for good measure, I leave the warm faucet in my kitchen running, so it’s always ready when I need it, so I save the precious 2 seconds it would take me to turn on the faucet and turn it off again). My heating bill would then be DKK 782.06 more expensive. This corresponds to an increase of only 29%. Quadrupling my use (perhaps also leaving my shower on for that instant shower when I fancy one) leads to an increase of around 87% for being a total jerk and wasting energy like a socialist preaching the joys of socialism to me. Furthermore, quadrupling my energy consumption (and doing the other crap) would only lead me to using 66% more energy than anticipated ( (3 • 782.06 – 337.87) / 3,048 * 100%).
I think I’ll go pour a liter of turps in the toilet just to even out whatever environmental benefit I have stupidly caused…
