Dusseldorf A long-standing German energy transition plan is getting underway these days: Meter operators want to install intelligent electricity meters in a number of households this year. The energy company Eon, which had installed 95,000 such meters so far, wants to have 173,000 meters this year. And smaller players are also expanding: For example, the meter operator Stromnetz Hamburg has installed 500 intelligent meters so far and wants to install 8,000 more this year.
These intelligent electricity meters – also known as smart meters – are intended to advance the energy transition. Because they can help to stabilize the power grid – for example, when an extremely large amount of solar power is fed in during a sunny hour or when, in the future, millions of electric cars are plugged into the wall box at home at the same time. With intelligent electricity meters, the grid operator can regulate who feeds electricity into the grid or draws it from the grid and when, for example allowing cars to be charged one after the other during the night.
But the transition to smart meters is not progressing. Germany is only just beginning to install smart meters – even though the EU had already set the target in 2009 of equipping at least 80 percent of consumers with smart meters by 2020. It took years for authorities to declare the necessary equipment safe. And now that the technology has advanced, companies and associations are reaching legal limits everywhere. It’s rumbling in the industry.
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Criticism comes from the electrical engineering association VDE. Frank Borchardt, Senior Project Manager Metering and Digitization at the VDE Forum Netztechnik/Netzbetrieb, says: “The current plans are by no means sufficient to make the distribution grid fit for the future.”
After all, smart meters are not supposed to be for everyone for the time being. The Metering Point Operation Act only provides for those who either consume at least 6,000 kilowatt hours of electricity a year – almost twice as much as an average three-person household – or operate a power plant with an output of at least seven kilowatts, for example a solar system on the roof. These criteria only apply to around ten percent of households.
Real estate companies are also interested in smart meters
According to Borchardt, however, even small families with electric cars or heat pumps need a smart meter for the energy transition to succeed. Because only then will network operators be able to control these devices in the future and thus stabilize the network. Customers can in turn benefit from this. Because if your electric car charges automatically when there is a lot of electricity in the grid, then this electricity is also particularly cheap. With a dynamic electricity tariff, the monthly electricity bill can be reduced.
>> Read here: What has to happen for Germany’s power grid to become sustainable
Because such options only work in households that are equipped with intelligent electricity meters, the electricity supplier Tibber, which is one of the first electricity suppliers to offer dynamic electricity tariffs, also criticizes the German smart meter strategy.
Tibber Germany boss Marion Nöldgen says: “Consumers only have an incentive to use electricity if it is cheap if the necessary infrastructure is there.” She therefore also calls for smart meters to be installed in a large part of the population.
Borchardt and Nöldgen received approval from an IT consultant. Jörg Ritter is a board member of the IT consulting company BTC, which enables the processing of smart meter data. He says: “It would be desirable for smart meters to be installed more quickly for smaller electricity consumers.” Ritter points out that smart meters are also useful for real estate companies. “This means that an apartment owner does not have to temporarily block the electricity meter when changing tenants.”
According to the real estate energy service provider Techem, smart meters can also help to minimize the CO2 footprint of buildings. Techem Managing Director Gero Lücking says: “Transparency of energy consumption also means transparency of costs and CO2 emissions. This knowledge is a prerequisite for being able to develop a strategy for the path to a CO2-neutral building stock.”
The fact that Germany is not planning any smart meters for small electricity consumers despite everything is due to a nine-year-old study by the auditor EY. In 2013, he examined the economic benefits of smart meters on behalf of the then Federal Ministry of Economics. The result: Only from an annual consumption of 6000 kilowatt hours does the installation of an intelligent electricity meter bring financial savings to a household – compared to the costs for the new meter.
High security container for smart meters
In fact, the responsible metering point operators usually make losses when they install a smart meter in a small electricity consumer. They cannot cover their costs. Because they can be more than 100 euros. But those who consume little electricity only have to pay 23 euros per year for the smart meter in the lowest consumption category – because the state has capped the prices.
However, the price cap can also mean that things get more expensive elsewhere. VDE expert Borchardt says: “If you make the power grid intelligent and control it flexibly, you can connect four more electric cars without having to expand the grid.”
At the same time, there is a good chance that the prices for smart meters will fall if they are installed over a large area. The first companies are already using synergy effects, such as the Baden-Württemberg metering point operator Netze BW. “In multi-family houses, we often only have one household that should have a smart meter, and many others that actually wouldn’t have one,” says Arkadius Jarek, head of department.
In such cases, Netze BW sometimes installs smart meters directly for all parties. Because the expensive component – the so-called Smart Meter Gateway – can be linked to several electricity meters and is therefore only required once for the entire house. According to the technology company EMH, which cooperates with Netze BW on some projects, the optional installation cases can also be developed economically.
The Hausheld company is pursuing a similar strategy: “Our basic assumption is that every meter should be digitized,” says its CEO Bouke Stoffelsma. Together with metering point operators, his company equips entire streets with smart meters at once – no matter how much electricity the residents consume. This also reduces costs because the fitters only have to travel once.
But here, too, legal provisions make the procedure complicated. The meter operator Discovergy points out that smart meters can only be shipped in expensive, highly secure transport containers that are used, for example, to manage ATMs.
Expectations of the new federal government are correspondingly high. After all, the coalition agreement states that the rollout of intelligent measuring systems should be significantly accelerated. Discovergy Managing Director Nikolaus Starzacher is optimistic: “The responsible State Secretary Patrick Graichen and his team think in systems and understand how the individual strands of action intertwine,” he says. And emphasizes: “The goals are ambitious, but there is no alternative.”
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