ᐅ Is it legal to remove the meter or rent the meter during a period of vacancy? No!

Hello,

For several years now, it has become common for energy suppliers to want to remove meters in multi-family buildings, citing either removal or meter fees as justification. On the internet, you can find a lot of amateurish nonsense about this, often claiming that since the meter belongs to them, they are also entitled to the money. They call it maintenance costs for the system but forget that except for the meter and the small main panel for the 3 phases, they own nothing else—and all of it is cheaper equipment already paid for with the first 6 months’ fees in the life of a house.

Since very few people understand the law and regulations, and even courts or lawyers often provide huge nonsense, it is important to clarify what the reality is. It was also said that removing and reinstalling a meter costs a lot of money, about 50€ (roughly 55 USD) each, and that you might lose existing legal protections in the process. Frequent meter rewiring is also bad for the meter wiring itself.

You should not assume that those who live off money are so generous that they spend their whole day giving away gifts, because far too many have only become rich through exploitation. Since Germany has some of the highest electricity prices—elsewhere it’s about 5-15 cents (USD) per kWh—this profiteering is well proven. Now, the problem lies with the landlord, who especially during vacancies would have to pay for the meters. With 7 meters, that can easily be 1000€ (around 1100 USD) per year, just for them sitting there unused. This cannot be a meter rental fee, firstly because the correct term is “basic fee” and not “meter fee” (which is just colloquial) and secondly because the energy companies pay about 15€ (about 16.5 USD) for a meter, so calling this a yearly rental fee is unreasonable since you could buy 8 new meters per year for that price.

It is also important to understand that electricity contracts are only concluded with the supplier or basic supplier, while the street grid including the meter belongs to the grid operator, with whom you cannot make a contract involving fees. According to §36 of the German Energy Industry Act (EnWG), the grid operator is obligated to supply electricity to every household/customer, even if they do not like the customer personally. They must provide a functioning grid to the customer free of charge, logically with a meter, because without a meter no electricity can be drawn. This is called the grid connection usage relationship, which most people don’t even know about.

From this, it follows that a meter cannot have any “meter fee” cost because it belongs free of charge to the mandatory connection of the grid operator, and the costs fall under the grid operator’s business risk. The basic supplier also has no right to declare the meters as their property since they don’t own them.

Now comes the basic supplier (or a free supplier), who buys electricity from the grid operator and then resells it to the customer. Only with this supplier can you make a fee contract. With the basic supplier, this is the basic supply contract, which must be concluded according to §2 and can be terminated within 2 weeks under §20 of the Electricity Basic Supply Ordinance. So, with a contract, there is a basic fee; without a contract, there is no fee because the basis for it is missing. Tenants can enter into the contract with the supplier, but so can the property owner, and either can cancel it. This creates a special situation. The grid operator must provide electricity to the building even if no one currently wants it; the basic supplier cannot collect money because the basic supply contract was properly canceled. If meters were then removed, it would be a violation of §36 EnWG. As a homeowner, you normally face this situation during vacancy periods that last months or years.

Now these two companies dare to target the customer’s money and threaten meter removal if the customer does not pay fees they are not obliged to pay when reading the law. But some people are naive enough to pay anyway or give up their meters—falling into the trap.

From our perspective, this is illegal and urgently needs to be clarified because many have allowed their meters to be removed with all unforeseen consequences or have even been sued, while ignorant or biased judges offer no remedy. The question is how to proceed. We suspect that a declaratory action is the right step to put an end to this arbitrariness. It can be taken up to the Federal Court of Justice to achieve a fundamental ruling.

The benefit of all this is that if you are sued, you immediately have an effective counterargument ready, since there is usually very little time to research during a lawsuit.