Habeck announces restart of smart meter rollout

[suchona.kani.z]

The smart meter rollout has been progressing very slowly in Germany for many years. Now, on October 20, 2022, Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck announced a restart of the rollout at the Future Energy Lab of the German Energy Agency (dena). In order to remove the legal and bureaucratic hurdles, a package of measures is to be drawn up and presented together with the industry that will significantly accelerate and simplify the rollout.

What takes a long time will eventually be redone
In 2016, the Act on the Digitalization of the Energy Transition (GDEW), which includes the Measuring Point Operation Act (MsbG), was published. The MsbG is intended to create binding framework conditions for the secure and data protection-compliant use of intelligent measuring systems. The intelligent measuring system consists of at least one modern measuring ghana consumer email list device, colloquially known as a smart meter, and the smart meter gateway (SMGW). The SMGW is intended to serve as a central communication interface for all measured consumption - between consumers and authorized market participants. The use of such intelligent measuring systems is important for the energy transition. Because while conventional power plants can adapt to us consumers, wind and sun pay less attention to our consumption behavior. Accordingly, a successful energy transition requires a change from consumption-oriented generation to generation-oriented consumption. In order to create the technical conditions with which we can respond flexibly to generation, digital intelligence, such as through the intelligent measuring system, is crucial.

The MsbG created the legal basis for the rollout of intelligent metering systems. On the one hand, technically, including through specifications on data security, and on the other hand, organizationally, through the obligation of metering point operators to set up this digital infrastructure.

The rollout of these intelligent measuring systems (smart meter rollout), which had been slow to begin with, recently came to a complete standstill.

With the ruling of the Higher Administrative Court (OVG) in Münster on March 4, 2021, the market declaration on the smart meter rollout originally announced by the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) became unlawful. The BSI's market declaration is highly relevant for the metering point operators (MSB).