The end of smart meters?

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The OVG NRW (Cologne) has put an end to smart meters with the non-appealable ruling 21 B 1162/20 of 04.03.2021, according to the Handwerksblatt of 18.05.2024 in the topic special "Court stops obligation to install smart meters" with.

The reasoning leads to the conclusion that the smart meters currently on the market do not meet the legal requirements.

The obligation to install currently available smart meters is therefore off the table - for the time being.

Back to the old meter?

Unfortunately, no - only consumption recording devices that have not yet been converted to smart meters may continue to operate. There is no requirement or provision for retrofitting an already installed smart meter to the previous state of the art.

Whether it is possible to dismantle the already installed smart meter and replace it with the good old alternating current meter (Ferraris meter) at the customer's request was not discussed.

And now?

... the electricity customer wonders. It stands to reason that the smart meter, which is also controversial in other respects, namely in terms of radiation exposure and the associated health risks, will be used again in the near future and its installation will once again become mandatory.

Opposition to smart meters?

Legally, there is no right to object to the - mandatory - installation of a smart meter.

An objection can still be raised and justified accordingly. However, electricity suppliers are required by law to reject the objection with reference to the legal situation.

Currently, neither arguments based on health nor data protection concerns are generally considered. Only in individual cases of massive health impairments, after lengthy procedural disputes in conjunction with medical expert opinions, are objection proceedings possibly promising.

Change of metering point operator

Changing the metering point operator may cause the installation of a smart meter to be postponed, but ultimately does not prevent it from being installed.

Consumption less than 6,000 kWh

Finally, it remains to reduce consumption to below 6,000 kWh per year. Below this limit, it is possible to install a smart meter WITHOUT remote communication.

However, the average consumption must be permanently below 6,000 kWh, which will rarely be feasible in a normal household.

Why smart meters at all?

The legislator's primary intention is to make consumers aware of their consumption behavior in order to initiate a reduction in electricity consumption.

Since data is transmitted every 15 minutes, conclusions can be drawn from this data collection that go far beyond the nominally intended purpose.

In addition to this data collection, the intermittent transmission causes increased radiation exposure due to high-frequency radiation in different frequency bands, including in the 5G network.

Further information on this topic can be found here and here.