Water, power and gas after you rent a flat in China

Three things decide a household utility bill here before any rate is applied: which tier the volume lands in, whether the meter is yours or shared, and what is inside the unit price.

One city’s electricity table charges a household on its own meter 0.4883 yuan per kWh for the first 240 kWh a month and 0.5383 for the next 160 (table, page dated 2026-07-22, no effective date printed, read 2026-10-12), so 300 kWh costs 149.49 yuan. Behind a shared meter the same 300 kWh is billed flat at the to-door price of 0.5103: 153.09 (both my arithmetic: 240 × 0.4883 + 60 × 0.5383; 300 × 0.5103). The two cross at about 403 kWh a month, the x that solves 240 × 0.4883 + 160 × 0.5383 + (x − 400) × 0.7883 = 0.5103x (my arithmetic). All of them change.

Opening the account, or leaving it in someone else’s name

Electricity. You apply at the utility’s hall or online, and it must publish the procedure and fee list (供电营业规则, Order 14, in force 2024-06-01, art 19). A household application takes a valid ID and a property-right document for the address (art 21); one utility’s notice falls back to the ID alone and takes the rest at the on-site survey (utility notice, version 20250915), and one city’s guide accepts a rental voucher filed with the housing authority in place of a title certificate, with the grid-side connection free (city guide, undated, read 2026-10-12).

Leaving the account in the previous occupant’s name has costs the rules spell out: a transfer of user means the property right at the address changed (art 24, item 6). The old user must clear its debts before that contract ends, and a private transfer without paperwork leaves the new user carrying the old debt (art 30); a name change on an unchanged address must be processed (art 31). None of it may be charged for, nor a replacement electricity card (787号, 2018-07-04), nor the metering device (129号, 2020-12-23, in force 2021-03-01).

Gas. The regulation puts the price in local hands: the local price authority sets it after consulting users and the operator, and operators must publish their process, fee list and hotline (城镇燃气管理条例, Order 583, in force 2011-03-01, current text revised 2016-02-06, arts 17 and 23). Fittings inside a flat follow national engineering standards (art 30).

Water. The price measures require the utility to reach the door — metered and billed per household (城镇供水价格管理办法, Order 46, in force 2021-10-01, art 20). New buildings must carry per-household meters, and pipes inside the red line are the developer’s cost (art 22).

Shared meters are legal in older blocks: where one meter per household is impossible the utility may install a shared one, residents may not refuse it, and anyone wanting a split may install a sub-meter and divide the bill (art 78).

When the meter is read

The cycle matters even when the yearly total does not: the tier applies per period. A utility Q&A on a county government portal (dated 2015-06-12, archived 2018-12-11) explains a bill that will not split by month: the cycle does not line up with the calendar month, so the volume read in month M is the previous period’s consumption, and the season class comes from the read month (Q&A, which explains the province’s 2012 ladder notice).

The tier, and what the national guidance fixes

There is no national price for any of the three, only a national shape. Electricity sets three tiers covering 80 and 95 percent of households, tier 2 at least 0.05 yuan above tier 1 and tier 3 about 0.30 above it, plus 10 or 15 kWh a month free for the two low-income categories (2617号 annex). Water uses the same coverage with steps no lower than 1 : 1.5 : 3 (2676号; Order 46, art 16). Gas puts the top two tiers at about 1.2 and 1.5 times tier 1 (467号). Cities choose the numbers.

Yuan per kWh and per cubic metre. Sources, all read 2026-10-12: electricity, a data page dated 2026-07-22, undated for effect; water, an undated query page whose sewage charge and resource tax sit outside the water-charge column; second city’s water notice of 2026-07-27, in force 2026-10-01, monthly, priced 1 : 1.5 : 3; gas, issued 2015-11-12, in force 2016-01-01, annual and priced 1 : 1.10 : 1.71 (my arithmetic); and third city’s gas notice, published 2026-07-14, where the top two tiers are exactly 1.2 and 1.5 times tier 1 and the residential rate takes effect on 2027-01-01.

Household size is the one adjustment on request: six people or more can raise each gas tier by 150 m³ a year (2015 gas notice, section four); one city lifts the tier base at five or more (city service item, undated, read 2026-10-12).

What is printed inside the unit price

Electricity. The published prices already contain three national charges: the renewable-energy surcharge at 0.1 fen, the reservoir-resettlement fund at 0.62 fen and the water-conservancy construction fund at 0.196875 fen per kWh — 0.916875 fen inside every tier including the 0.4883 (my addition, city electricity page, note 3). The same page prices the renewable-energy surcharge for commercial users at 1.9 fen per kWh, nineteen times the residential line (note 5).

Water. Tier 1 is 5.00 yuan a cubic metre — a 2.07 water charge, a 1.36 sewage charge and the resource tax; tier 2 is 7.00 with 4.07, and tier 3 is 9.00 with 6.07. The last two components are 2.93 in every tier (my arithmetic: 5.00 − 2.07, 7.00 − 4.07, 9.00 − 6.07), leaving the resource tax at 1.57, a line the page hands to a separate local rule. The water charge runs 1 : 1.97 : 2.93 across the tiers, the headline price 1 : 1.4 : 1.8 (my arithmetic).

Sewage charges have national floors — at least 0.95 yuan a cubic metre for households and 1.4 for others in cities, by the end of 2016 (119号, 2015-01-21) — and one city tiers them on the water volumes at 1.00, 1.50 and 3.00, with 1.18 for shared-meter households (city sewage notice, issued 2022-07-30, in force 2022-08-01, page republished 2025-08-04 as current).

The resource tax is the newest line, nationwide from 2024-12-01 (财税〔2024〕28号, 2024-10-11). The taxpayer is whoever takes surface water or groundwater directly, so the utility pays it, not the household, and the tax may not be folded into the tap-water price: it is listed separately in the terminal composite price (art 30). One city’s water notice of 2026-07-27 requires the bill to print it, the sewage charge and the waste charge as separate lines.

Gas. There is no comparable national surcharge line: the price is the city-gate cost plus distribution and a local margin, moved by a linkage formula, with the shrinkage rate capped at 4.5 percent (2015 gas notice, annex 2) — which is why a city’s notice of 2026-07-13 sets a residential rate effective only on 2027-01-01.

The shared meter, and the middleman

A shared meter has its own price. One province adds 0.016 yuan per kWh to shared-meter households and does not tier them (Q&A above); one city charges residents behind a shared meter 0.5103 against 0.4883 on its own meter; a second city puts shared-meter water at 1.89 a cubic metre flat against 1.75 for tier 1, and the national measures require that shared-meter price to sit above tier 1 (Order 46, art 16). So the flat price works backwards for small users: below about 403 kWh a month the shared meter costs more, above it less (my arithmetic).

What a middleman may add is capped. A non-grid supplier must apply the government price to metered terminal users and may not put common-area upkeep into the electricity bill (Order 14, art 17); its collection may not exceed what it paid the grid, and those costs come out of the property fee (1491号, 2018-11-20). A water supplier that has not reached door-to-door billing must charge metered users the government price (art 21), and nobody collecting a water, power, gas or heating bill on a utility’s behalf may add a fee (129号, section two, item six).

You can also ask the utility to verify your meter: it must test within five working days and recalculate the bill if the meter is outside its permitted error (arts 81 and 82). Verification may not be charged for compulsorily; a check you commission is yours to pay unless the meter is faulty, in which case the utility pays and replaces it free (129号, section two, item six).

Where these numbers come from

Every figure was read on 2026-10-12 from the page it cites: four national price documents, the 2024 electricity rules, the 2021 water price measures, the 2003 gas regulation as revised in 2016, one tax document, three city price tables, one city sewage notice, two utility notices and one utility Q&A.

The tables keep their own units: kWh per household per month for electricity, cubic metres per year for one water table and per month for another, annual volumes for gas. City and provincial material is labelled as such, and no operator or landlord is named. One reading changed on the second pass: the shared-meter water price in the 2026 notice applies only where billing is not per household.

What I could not check

• A national deposit or prepayment rule for a household utility account. None of the national texts I read mentions one, so a deposit comes from a city or an operator’s list.
• The document list for opening or transferring gas and water accounts. That duty sits on the operator, and I could not load a piped-gas opening guide.
• Whether the itemised charges hold elsewhere. The breakdown comes from one city, and no second city prints all three electricity charges in one place.
• Whether the 0.016 yuan shared-meter addition is current. It rests on a 2015 Q&A explaining a 2012 notice; the tiers match the national guidance, the base price it prints, 0.588 yuan, does not.
• The reading cycle in the third city’s 2024 gas scheme, which its 2026 notice does not reprint.
• Water and gas reading frequency, and shared-meter pricing in other cities. No national rule covers either.
• Whether sewage charges are tiered in most cities. One city tiers them on the water volumes; the city quoted most here prices them flat across tiers.
• Anything about where I live, what I pay, or which operator serves this address. Deliberately absent.