Our preview of B.One eMonitoring implement the interim consumption information (uVI)

Interim consumption information serves to inform consumers. The legislator's compelling premise is that climate protection and CO₂ reduction are only possible if both building owners and consumers are informed about how much and for what purpose they consume heating energy and hot water. Heating bills can only provide this information at excessively long annual intervals. Therefore, for wirelessly readable meters, Minol offers interim consumption information, known as uVI, in addition to the annual reading and billing. This interim consumption information allows residents to:

• react more quickly to high consumption and thus optimize their own energy and water consumption,
• This saves costs and contributes to environmental protection.
• to understand the impact of their own consumption behavior more quickly and
• Greater transparency is achieved through comparisons with the previous year and average consumption.

The obligation to provide interim consumption information is stipulated in Section 6a, Billing and Consumption Information, of the Heating Costs Ordinance . The new Heating Costs Ordinance transposed the requirements of the EU Energy Efficiency Directive (EED) into German law.

Users, i.e., owner-occupiers and tenants, must be provided with interim consumption information starting January 1, 2022. However, this only applies if suitable remotely readable metering equipment, such as Minol Connect, is installed.

No, only the final statement of heating and hot water costs, issued at least every twelve months, fulfills the requirements of the Heating Costs Ordinance. Interim consumption information is intended solely to help homeowners and tenants regularly estimate their consumption. It cannot replace a formal statement of costs, partly because interim consumption information can only indicate consumption trends, not specific amounts.

No, interim consumption data is for informational purposes only. It does not entitle the landlord to immediate demands for additional payments. An annual consumption statement is still required for that.

According to the requirements in § 6a Billing and Consumption Information of the Heating Costs Ordinance, interim consumption information must contain the following details:

• The user's consumption for heating and hot water in the last month in kilowatt hours.
• A comparison of this consumption with the consumption of the previous month and the same month of the previous year.
• A comparison with a standardized average user.

Minol's consumption information naturally meets all these requirements.

The reporting of cold water consumption data is not part of the legal requirements for interim consumption information. However, Minol does include cold water consumption data in its interim consumption reports when the metering devices are technically capable and a billing contract for cold water exists. Omitting this data would not be understood by the residents.

Consumption data for the period between the year and the end of the year must be provided monthly. Any different periods specified before January 1, 2022, are now obsolete. Critics might argue that information about heating consumption in the summer is irrelevant. However, hot water preparation accounts for between 30 and 50% of the building's total energy demand year-round, which is why monthly consumption data for the entire year is quite sensible and was therefore mandated by law.

Like all requirements of the Heating Costs Ordinance, the obligation to provide interim consumption information also applies to the building owner. The following are considered equivalent to the building owner: the person authorized to grant use in their own name and for their own account; the person to whom the operation of systems within the meaning of Section 1 Paragraph 1 No. 1 has been transferred in such a way that they are entitled to demand payment from the user; in the case of condominium ownership, the community of condominium owners in relation to the individual condominium owner; and in the case of the rental of one or more condominiums, the condominium owner in relation to the tenant ( Heating Costs Ordinance, Section 1 Scope of Application ).

The current Heating Costs Ordinance not only stipulates that interim consumption information must be provided, but also, in Section 12 (Right to Reduce Costs, Transitional Provisions), that users have the right to reduce their share of heating and hot water costs by three percent if the building owner fails to fulfill this obligation. Like all other rights to reduce costs, these apply to the relationship between tenant and landlord, but not between individual apartment owners and the owners' association.

Section 6a of the Heating Costs Ordinance stipulates that building owners must provide their users with interim consumption information. A cancellation by apartment owners or tenants does not release the building owner from this obligation, which is why this option is not provided. However, users can deactivate notifications about new consumption information.

Generating monthly data and making it available via web services or apps requires considerable technical and logistical effort on the part of the metering service provider. Therefore, interim consumption data is not available free of charge.

Just as the costs for preparing the annual consumption-based statement are chargeable to tenants, so too are the costs for interim consumption information. Section 7, paragraph 2 of the Heating Costs Ordinance explicitly names the costs of consumption information pursuant to Section 6a as a chargeable item.

The Heating Costs Ordinance does not stipulate that owner-occupiers or tenants must be informed in advance about future interim consumption data. Providing the interim consumption data as soon as it becomes available would therefore suffice. Nevertheless, it is certainly advisable to inform residents in advance.

It is not necessary for property managers and landlords to obtain the consent of homeowners or tenants to forward their email addresses to a metering service provider. The email address is essential for the regular, interim digital generation of consumption information, and its use without prior authorization is formulated and described in several sources.

If landlords print out interim consumption statements themselves and provide them to tenants, this incurs costs. According to the legal assessment of the German Federal Association of Housing and Real Estate Companies (GdW), these costs are eligible for pass-through to tenants. GdW Working Paper 90 states on page 19: "The GdW Legal Committee has concluded that there are compelling reasons to believe that the costs of sending these statements (e.g., postage) are eligible for pass-through to the responsible party, i.e., the respective tenant, as costs associated with providing billing and consumption information."

Yes. According to Section 6a of the Heating Costs Ordinance, "users" must be provided with the relevant billing or consumption information for heating and hot water. The ordinance does not differentiate between commercial and private users and thus applies to both. This is also reasonable, as interim consumption information is intended to help save energy. From the legislator's perspective, there is no apparent reason why a distinction should be made between commercial and private users.

In order for you as a Minol customer to provide your homeowners and tenants with interim consumption information, you need the following for the respective building:

• a service contract for the annual Heating bill with Minol
• Measuring devices with Minol Connect wireless technology and
• a commission to provide interim consumption information.

For older generations of measuring devices, it is not possible to obtain consumption information for periods during the year.

Whether a building already has the latest electronic consumption recording technology with Minol Connect radio technology can also be determined by examining the existing heat cost allocators. This is the case if the devices on the radiator bear the imprint "Minometer M8 radio" or a higher suffix.

The Minol contractual partner, i.e., the property manager or landlord, is responsible for requesting interim consumption information. The following options are available:

• For existing billing customers with Minol Connect wireless technology You must actively request to receive interim consumption information from Minol. In this case, you can easily order the appropriate Minol eMonitoring solution on your overview page in the Minol customer portal.
• For new billing customers as well as existing billing customers without Minol Connect radio technology Ideally, the provision of interim consumption data should be agreed upon at the time of contract signing. The necessary authorization form is already included in the contract documents.

Property managers or landlords who have commissioned eMonitoring can update the access data of current apartment occupants daily in the Minol online portal . The corresponding module, "User Portal Rights Management," can be found under the "eMonitoring" section.

In addition to classic eMonitoring, Minol also offers the eMonitoring Plus and eMonitoring Aareon versions . These include daily data exchange of user data via web service. This allows for the automated synchronization of user data already present in your own IT solution with Minol eMonitoring. Minol utilizes the interfaces of the German Association for Energy and Water Data Management (bved, formerly ARGE Heiwako) and Aareon. The transmitted user data is directly integrated into the eMonitoring access control system. The advantage: Resident access is automatically activated within the application, eliminating the need for manual maintenance.

Users can request a new password via the homepage of the online portal ( webservices.minol.com ) or via the app's homepage. By clicking "Forgot password," users can enter their email address and subsequently have a verification code sent to them by email. After successfully entering the verification code, users can then set a new password. If the email is not received within a few minutes, users should check their spam folder.

For property managers and landlords with their own IT solutions for visualizing and distributing interim consumption data to residents, such as third-party portals or the Aareon CRM portal, we recommend using Minol Cloud2Cloud solutions. The Minol Cloud2Cloud solution provides them with consumption data electronically and automatically via predefined interfaces. In addition to standardized interfaces from the German Association for Energy and Water Data Management (bved) and Aareon, the Cloud2Cloud solution also supports a custom interface that can be programmed for exchanging consumption data.

In addition to the frequently asked questions about interim consumption information (uVI) answered here, the GdW Federal Association of German Housing and Real Estate Companies offers a GdW Working Aid 90 – “Implementation of the amended Heating Cost Ordinance 2021” – for download on its website . This publication is free for member companies.