Did anyone else experience higher heating costs over the past year? Did prices go up? We were surprised after such a mild winter to see our bill had doubled (extra nebenkosten). There are no other additional costs showing compared to the previous years.

There was an increase in energy prices last year but I would be very surprised if if was enough to cause your bill to double.
Our bills went down as we moved to a more energy efficient house so I don't know how the increase would have affected us had we still been in that house.

Still waiting for the adjustment for our place. Been there 16 months so I guess we'll get it at some point.

We noticed it went down a bit, I would say about 10 percent. Just had the tank filled. I also put a timer on the burner so the whole system shuts down for 3 hours in the morning and 4 in the afternoon when we are usually all away. I calculated the cost at about 133 CHFs per month for (underfloor) heating, and hot water.

I paid about the same as the year before, even though the year before was substantially colder.

So a little update on our situation. I contacted the Mieterverband, who were helpful in that they sent me a lengthy response. They found a lot of things that didn't make sense in the bill and said it was way too high as were my other bills that I'd paid over the years (I only sent those for comparison/reference). The problem is that my German isn't really good enough to understand it perfectly and it's three pages of information.

Can I reach out to someone here who has really good German to perhaps summarize it for me in English and help me with the letter to the landlord? The Mieterverband has included a generic letter to send but there are some bullet points for me to fill in, and my German really isn't strong enough. If anyone could help, I can pm you scans of the response to me and the generic letter. Thanks to anyone who can assist!

Hi there

I too, got a massive bill for "cold winter". Nearly 1000chf

They wont send me any breakdown of costs after 2 requests.

My question. Are they legal obliged to send a breakdown explaining the extra costs or can they just charge what they want?

Should I ask the neighbours if they got the same or is that rude?

@little_isabella if you send me the text in the letter - my German colleague loves to translate so would help.

Mike

I didn't want to start a new thread though I had a few options about where to put this.

Our electricity consumption for 2022 was 25% LESS than 2021.

This is a bit of a mystery as we didn't make any major changes and our heating and cooling system was running just as it was in 2021.

There is only thing I can think of which could have an impact on the lower usage. Rather than using the electric rolladen (rolling shutters) to block out the sun in winter, I finally managed to installed window coverings on all the windows to filter the light so in winter the rooms seems to warm up when it is sunny. We have thermostats in each room.

Since we don't have drape tracks in any rooms, and a lot of windows, it took me awhile to cover the windows.

Of course in summer when it is very hot we do use the outside shutters to keep the sun out and help keep the house cool. We have a central cooling system.

As the electricity costs for 2023 are significantly higher than 2022 we are doing our utmost to keep the costs down in winter. Our house is set to 19 degrees in winter and we use the shutters twice a day, morning and evening.

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Is your heating/cooling running on electricity? Otherwise it doesn't make sense to include that.

Electric shutters will have neglegible impact on the bill.

I can only really go back to 2021 - prior to that we had separate billing for house and heat pump and no solar panels. (Plus billing was will-nilly depending on the annual metre reading.)

Total electricity cost for a 5½ room detached 2008-built house (no gas):
2021: CHF1,232 - solar generated 9,168 kWh
2022: CHF 747 - solar generated 10, 254 kWh

About 40% less! The price with EKZ did go down marginally in 2022, but less than 1%.

Although we put more back in grid in 2022, we also used more of our own solar generation...

Yes, heating/cooling system runs entirely on electricity.
House was built in 2009 and is well insulated.

My point about the shutters had nothing to do with how much electricity they use but how leaving them up when it is sunny in winter warms the room. Window coverings inside filter the light.