Halting the smart meter rollout: Our statement
30 Jun 2021
In the future, smart meters will be irreplaceable as an essential component of the energy system transition, enabling electricity generation and consumption to be coordinated in the best possible way through greater transparency in the power grid and offering end customers transparency about their consumption and other value-added services. This is how it was intended in the law on the digitization of the energy system transition; installation of the electricity meters referred to as "smart metering systems (iMSys)" in the wording of the law was to begin in 2017. It took more than three years of delay before the BSI (German Federal Office for Information Security) gave the go-ahead in February 2020 and the smart meter rollout began slowly and sluggishly. Now, for the time being, it is already over again: The Higher Administrative Court of North Rhine-Westphalia suspended the corresponding general order of the BSI by emergency order on March 4, 2021.