Germany to make smart meters mandatory?

Reporting has emerged that Germany wants to make smart meters mandatory for large- and medium-sized companies.

The report from Bloomberg News, which is based on a paper from the Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action the news organisations says it has seen, states the reasoning for the proposal is to enable grid operators to better monitor how power is being used and when to augment supplies with electricity from renewable sources.

The proposal also is reported to want to make it easier to instal smart meters for domestic customers.

Currently the penetration of smart meters in Germany is estimated less than 20% of the approximately 50.7 million metering points, with the country slow to start a rollout due to initial cost-benefit analyses being negative.

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Data protection and cybersecurity concerns also have played a role in slowing a national rollout.

Subsequently, however, smart metering has become compulsory for larger domestic consumers with a consumption of more than 6,000kWh per year or for those with a power generating module exceeding 7kWp.

With Germany at the centre of the energy crisis because of the dependency on Russian gas, while at the same time transitioning off fossil fuels to intermittent wind and solar generation, the need for improved visibility on energy consumption and the status of the networks that the latest generation smart meters offer is obvious.

According to the Bloomberg report, the government is aiming for parliamentary approval of the plan in the first quarter of next year.

In its energy digitalisation strategy released in October, the European Commission called for a revisiting of cost-benefit analyses in the light of the changed energy panorama and technology availability since these were first undertaken a decade ago.

Among other actions to conserve energy, the German ministry has introduced measures to speed up the implementation of federally funded high saving energy efficiency initiatives. Under the new measures companies can start implementing their projects directly after submitting their application for the funding, whereas previously they needed to wait for approval.