Consume and pay less - a budget approach for running costs in social housing

Panel: 8. Buildings: technologies and systems beyond energy efficiency

This is a peer-reviewed paper.

Authors:
Marc Großklos, Institut Wohnen und Umwelt, Germany
Tobias Loga, Institut Wohnen und Umwelt, Germany

Abstract

Energy-efficient buildings such as passive houses have low heating costs. This would be good for low-income residents but so far, it has been associated with higher rents. But other running costs such as drinking water and electricity must be reduced significantly too so that low-income population groups are not financially overwhelmed. If the municipalities bear the costs for these tenants, the question arises as to how incentives can be set for economic use.

The “PassiveHouseSocialPlus” project shows how low rents and low ancillary costs can be combined. Different concepts for reducing running or ancillary costs were implemented and tested in two apartment buildings in Germany. In addition to passive house standard and efficient hot water preparation, the total of 42 low rent residential apartments are equipped with e.g. energy-efficient kitchen appliances, LED lighting and gray water usage for flushing toilets.

A special feature is the flat-rate billing of most ancillary costs. As a result, the residents are not subject to unforeseen expenses and billing for the landlord is simplified. Since the energy consumption for heating has been greatly reduced by the passive house standard, space and water heating is also included in the flat rate. For drinking water and household electricity structural measures reducing the consumption are only possible to a limited extent.

Therefore, budgets have been agreed in the ancillary costs that are sufficient if people behave economically.

If these budgets are exceeded, the tenants have to buy additional quantities.

In order to inform the tenants how much of their budget is actually being used up, the consumption of water and electricity is measured and shown to the tenants over time on a display in the apartment. This is also supposed to keep the consumption low.

The utilisation and consumption of the apartments are being measured in detail. Basic results are that the heat usage is about in the calculated range and the winter room temperatures are with 22.0 °C the same as in privately financed apartments.

The budgets for drinking water and electricity are only exceeded slightly. For electricity, the tenants reach nearly the best energy efficiency category. At the same time, the additional costs are around 45% below the costs of comparable apartments.

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