IES Holding President Mikhail Slobodin held a roundtable discussion on the "Count, Save and Pay" project within the framework of the All-Russian conference "Energy Efficiency and Energy Saving in Regions, Municipalities, and Public Sector". The conference held on April 21 in Moscow was organized by the Russian Ministry of Energy, Ministry of Economic Development, and the Russian Energy Agency.
"The main objective of the "Count, Save and Pay" project is to stimulate the process of energy saving by linking energy saving actions with the amount of money on utility bills," Mikhail Slobodin said in his speech. "There is no incentive to save energy without its metering; there are no actions for energy saving without understanding how to save and what to do; in fact, energy saving does not make any sense without an incentive to pay less," IES President said.
After the roundtable discussion the participants, including heads of relevant regional ministries, vice-governors, representatives of energy companies and research centers, discussed a number of key issues that have to be resolved for an effective implementation of the project. First of all, ways of encouraging consumers to install power meters, issues of determining property rights and removing restrictions that prevent installation of metering devices. Secondly, there is a need to develop mechanisms to ensure payment discipline, including improvement of social subsidy system and promotion of energy saving culture.
Besides, participants of the meeting discussed ways to introduce and replicate in Russia modern Smart Metering systems for consumed electricity and heat, and the idea of creating a non-profit partnership of manufacturers of metering and controlling devices. |
