Metering in Carinthia

It has been already one year since I have come to Carinthia. Exactly on the October 1st I was moving into this flat.
For my curiosity, I wanted to track my consumption after 1 year of activity. First of all I have to explain how billing works here in Carinthia. Basically, when I moved in I signed a contract with the energy utility, to get energy under two different tariffs, a day plan, under which all appliances are charged, and a night plan, under which the big, I would say huge boiler runs every night, and is charged for less. Obviously there is also possibility to run it over day, but well, I wouldn't do it. I actually have a second boiler in the kitchen, which is supposed to heat water for the sink, but I keep it off from the very first day. Since Austria did not proceed yet with rolling out smart meters, the trick here was to use two different meters, billing the appliances under two tariffs. If you are interested in an overview of scenarios in the region of Carinthia, along with differences from the Italian region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, I would forward you to this publication.

Here is the consumption for the year:

#8494257:
003855 (01.10.2012), 4224 (30.09.2013). 4224-3855=369KW/h

#127431:
004254 (01.10.2012), 4600 (30.09.2013). 4600-4254=346KW/h

Now unless I am completely wrong, the first should be the day meter and the second the night one. This is not important though. What is interesting to observe is that I consumed more or less the same amount for the boiler and all the rest of devices I use at home, that is: TV, computer, electric hob, electric oven, hood, fridge, lights. Considering that I am an Italian guy, who enjoys cooking every now and then this is quite much.

Since the absence of smart metering precludes the possibility of adaptive tariffs, savings can only result from energy conservation rather than shifting devices to off-peak and cheaper periods of the day. Therefore, any kind of energy conservation strategy for Carinthia will have to consider the boiler as the main greedy device accounting for the greatest share of consumption in households, thus providing large room for tailored strategies, which should consider the actual use of water by users. This motivates quite a lot further investigations in the optimization of this kind of appliance, given that the availability of renewable energy can reduce energy costs and mitigate the cost for water heating, as well as user modeling can help optimize the provisioning of hot water to inhabitants.

 

Fig. The plugwise smart plug

I invite you to drop a line if you have comments, or give a look to the Monergy project if just interested in this kind of information. 

Bless bless,

Andrea