Heat Metering
Often heat is metered to customers using a heat meter, to encourage economy and maximise the number of customers which can be served, but these are expensive. Many communist-era systems were not metered, leading to great inefficiencies - users simply opened windows when too hot - wasting energy and minimising the numbers of connectable customers. Due to the expense of heat metering, an alternative approach is simply to meter the water - water meters are much cheaper than heat meters, and have the advantage of encouraging consumers to extract as much heat as possible, leading to a very low return temperature, which increases the efficiency of power generation.
Read more about this topic: District Heating
Famous quotes containing the word heat:
“I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more—the feeling that I could last for ever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men; the deceitful feeling that lures us on to joys, to perils, to love, to vain effort—to death; the triumphant conviction of strength, the heat of life in the handful of dust, the glow in the heart that with every year grows dim, grows cold, grows small, and expires—and expires, too soon, too soon—before life itself.”
—Joseph Conrad (1857–1924)