Common Heat Availability Charge or CHAC
In response to some queries we felt it may be useful to post an explanation about the Common Heat Availability Charge (CHAC).
The CHAC is a charge that reflects the heat loss from your building block’s heating system from where it connects to our district heating system to where it connects to your apartment. We are contracted to absorb a percentage of these heat losses within our charges, but the remainder of the heat losses are charged via the CHAC.
How is the CHAC calculated?
Each month the bulk meter located where the building block’s heating system connects to our district heating system is read on our automated meter reading system. This is subtracted from the previous month’s meter reading to give the total heat consumed by the residents meters and the heat loss from the building block’s heating system for the month.
East London Energy (ELE) absorbs 15% of the total heat consumed to contribute to the building block’s heat losses. This is accounted for by reducing the bulk meter consumption by 15% before we use it to calculate the CHAC.
Each month each meter in each residential property is read on our automated meter reading system. For each meter this is subtracted from the previous month’s meter reading to give the resident’s heat consumed for the month.
The accumulation of all resident heat consumed in the building block is subtracted from the 85% of the total heat consumed by the building block which gives the CHAC for the building block in kWh.
This figure is multiplied by the appropriate rate from the RSA to obtain a monetary value, presently 6.8p/kWh.
This value is divided by the number of metered residential properties in the building block to give a CHAC value for each residential property for that month.
This figure is pro-rated as necessary where the bill only applies to part of a month.
As the consumption will be different from one month to the next and will be different per block then this will result in differing CHAC across the months and blocks.