A man in Norderstedt in Schleswig-Holstein receives a letter from the municipal utility: he has to pay 1.6 million euros for district heating. In one video he goes crazy.
Due to the energy crisis, many consumers expect to have to dig deep into their pockets for heating this winter. With a bill of 1.6 million euros, most people would still be heartbroken. This is exactly what happened to a man from Norderstedt in Schleswig-Holstein: In a YouTube video he vents his anger about it.
The man would have to pay 1.6 million euros for district heating
“Do you have one on clarinet or what?” scolds Timo Sievert in his video. According to Stadtwerke Norderstedt’s “information letter on potential savings” he would have to pay 1,647,620.33 euros for district heating for an estimated annual consumption of 9,840,000 kilowatt hours. With just a “small loss of thermal comfort” it could save around 590,400 kilowatt hours of energy or 98,000 euros.
It is clear to him that it can only be a mistake: the firefighter has had a seven-room, 150 square meter house in Norderstedt near Hamburg for two months. “I don’t want to heat up the whole neighborhood here,” he says. However, he wonders why such letters are sent. Some people would take them at face value: “If a 90-year-old grandmother takes it, then she’s going to fall off the couch dead,” Sievert says indignantly. “Does anyone check the mail you send?” The firefighter rumbled over the letter in his video for more than seven minutes. His conference has already been called more than 72,000 times.
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Stadtwerke: A system error has caused an incorrect district heating bill
Stadtwerke Norderstedt confirmed the incident to the online portal Hamburger Morgenpost. A system error is to blame for the wrong letter, said spokesman Oliver Weiß. Since Sievert has just moved, the previous resident’s annual consumption was used as the basis for the consumption estimate. Utility district heating meters would then always measure in megawatt-hours, while the consumer would receive data in kilowatt-hours. A conversion error occurred in the system which increased the total by a factor of 1,000.
