Heating prices in Brno will be reduced from 1 March 2023. Photo credit: Freepik.
Brno, Feb 10 (BD) – Brno’s municipal heating company, Teplárny Brno, is planning to reduce the price of heating from 1 March.
The price of thermal energy at the output from the secondary network will be 1,350 CZK/Gigajoules without VAT (1,485 CZK/GJ with VAT), and at the output of the primary network, it will be 1,190 CZK/GJ without VAT (1,309 CZK/GJ with VAT).
A secondary network is a complex power grid with a web of multiple parallel sources of power to each customer. The benefit for customers connected to these systems is they should rarely experience interruptions in power.
The main reason for the dropping price of home heating is the lower cost of purchasing natural gas and emission allowances. A household that consumes 20 GJ per year will therefore pay CZK 3,740 less than at the prices in effect since November last year.
The mayor of Brno, Markéta Vaňková, announced the price reduction for Brno customers after an agreement with the management of Teplárny Brno. She praised the data so far showing that many citizens are using energy responsibly, by cutting waste and household consumption.
Increasing income from the sale of electricity and from the provision of support services also contributed to the ability of heating plants to reduce the price of heat. Co-generation, where electricity is produced together with heat, has proven to be the most advantageous method in the long term, according to the CEO of Teplárny Brno, Petr Fajmon.
The company has also modernised technologies to offset the price of gas. Brno residents are using less heat, and the weather also contributes to savings. Since the end of last year, data has indicated clearly that the majority of Teplárny Brno customers are employing cost-cutting measures, including those recommended in the company’s Topme Smart campaign.
The company’s customers reduced their heat use by around 11% between October 2022 and the end of January this year. “They consumed 200,000 GJ less as a consequence of the cost-cutting measures; in terms of crowns, the savings amount is up to CZK 300 million,” said the financial director of Teplárny Brno, Přemysl Měchura. “According to the conversion of consumption to the temperature parameters of the 2021–2022 period, this saving is attributable to real cost-cutting initiatives, not climatic factors.”
However, the more benign weather also helped reduce consumption. The average temperature from October last year to the end of January this year was +5.3 °C, which is almost one degree Celsius warmer in the same period the year before.
“Compared to the long-term, thirty-year average, the current period is 1.8 °C warmer, and since 1990 it is the third warmest October-January period,” Měchura added.
The combination of warm weather and thrifty behaviour from customers also explains the historical lowest sales of heat. In the period from October 2022 to January 2023, heating plants sold 1.6 million GJ, a 15% drop year-on-year.
