"District Heating Sofia" is the
district heating company in
Sofia, the capital of
Bulgaria. It is the oldest and largest district heating network in Bulgaria (and, according to the company's website, on the
Balkan Peninsula), brought into use in 1949 with the opening of the first
combined heat and power plant –
TEC Sofia.[1]
Toplofikatsiya Sofia is a
single-member JSC and holds a
monopoly on heat distribution in the city. As of 2012, the company has a hot water and steam distribution network of over 950 km throughout the city [2][3](slide 3) and has over 430 000 clients.[4](p. 15)
The company also has several temporary boiler stations throughout the city, which are usually only used during the winter months.
As of February 2013, part of the
2013 Bulgarian protests are aimed at the business model employed by Toplofikatsiya Sofia, with protesters complaining about high bills and lack of transparency in the company's practices.[8][9][10][11][12]