District Heating
The Commission for Regulation of Utilities (CRU) has been appointed as regulator of District Heating and Cooling networks. The CRU now has a broad range of functions under S.I. 630 of 2022, focusing on the protection of final customers of district heating, district cooling and domestic hot water.
Under this legislation, the CRU will do the following:
- Ensure final customers are provided with competitively priced meters that accurately reflect their actual energy consumption.
- Develop guidelines to determine technical feasibility and cost effectiveness of metering/cost allocation.
- Develop and publish national rules on allocation of cost of heating and cooling and domestic how water in multi-apartment/multi-purpose buildings.
- Ensure transparency and accuracy of accounting for individual consumption.
- Develop guidelines on circumstances in which it may be cost efficient to replace existing meters and heat cost allocators which are not remotely readable.
- Develop guidelines which ensure that billing and consumption information is reliable, accurate and based on actual consumption.
- Develop minimum requirements for provision of information on customers’ bills.
- Ensure that customers are offered the option of electronic billing and flexible payment arrangements.
- Ensure that customers receive their bills and billing information free of charge and that customers have access to their consumption data in an appropriate way.
- Provide a dispute and customer complaint resolution service and provide an annual report to the Minister regarding complaints.
The CRU is now developing a regulatory framework for the sector and will publicly consult on this in due course.
Separately, under S.I. 350 of 2022, the CRU must ensure that final consumers of district heating are provided with information on the energy performance and the share of renewable energy used in their district heating and cooling system. This may be made available on a final consumer’s bill or on the supplier’s website, and it must also be made available, on request, from the supplier.
The CRU will also require district heating suppliers to register with the CRU and we will publish details of the registration process for suppliers on our website shortly.
For more information, or if you have any queries, please contact the CRU’s District Heating team at districtheating@cru.ie