October 2025 |
251006 |
ENERGY CHRONICLE |
Distribution network operators Mitnetz and Westnetz charged their customers excessive installation costs when they requested the replacement of old electricity meters with “smart meters.” According to the Federation of German Consumer Organizations (vzbv), it successfully sued the companies in the regional courts of Halle and Bochum. Another case against LEW Verteilnetz is still pending before the regional court in Augsburg. All three electricity network operators belong to the E.ON Group, which took them over from the RWE Group in 2019 as part of the agreed market division (180301), along with their parent companies EnviaM, Innogy, and Lechwerke.
On January 21 of this year, the Federal Association of Consumer Organizations wrote to both Mitnetz Strom and Westenergie regarding their frequently excessive prices. Both were requested to submit cease-and-desist declarations subject to penalty and to pay the warning costs, which they refused to do. Therefore, the courts had to decide. The Halle Regional Court announced its ruling on August 21, followed by the Bochum Regional Court on September 30. As the E.ON electricity network operators have lodged an appeal, neither ruling is yet legally binding.
Mitnetz Strom wanted to charge up to € 854 more than the permitted price for the requested installation of a smart meter. According to the price list, installation should cost € 883.86 if annual electricity consumption is less than 3,000 kilowatt hours. Households with an annual consumption of between 3,000 and 6,000 kilowatt hours were to pay € 643.86. According to the Metering Point Operation Act, € 30 would have been considered a reasonable price at the time. Customers were therefore charged almost thirty times more than what would have been considered a “reasonable price.”
In February 2025, an amendment to the Metering Point Operation Act came into force, raising the reasonable price for a smart meter installation requested by the customer from € 30 to € 100. Mitnetz then adjusted its price to € 99.50. “The defendant itself thus proves the unreasonableness of the amounts it previously charged,” the Halle Regional Court stated in its reasoning for the judgment. “The prices of just under € 650 and just under € 900 also exceed the maximum amount, which has been changed to € 100, many times over.”
Similarly, E.ON subsidiary Westnetz had charged enormously inflated prices in its price list valid from January 1, 2025, for the “early” installation of smart meters at the customer's request: For an annual consumption of up to 3,000 kilowatt hours, the price was 973.59 euros. For up to 6,000 kWh, the price dropped to 733.59 euros, and for even higher consumption, to 120.87 euros. Here, too, up to € 940 more was charged than would have been “reasonable” under the current legal situation. The amounts, accurate to the cent, gave the impression that they had been calculated according to exact legal requirements. In reality, these were deterrent prices that only differentiated according to electricity consumption, but otherwise charged very different prices for the same work.
E.ON subsidiary Westnetz also preferred to go to court rather than comply with the vzbv's warning letter. At the same time, however, like Mitnetz, it reduced its previous price demands to the legal level of € 100 applicable from February, which was nine times lower than its previous maximum demand. However, not quite: unlike Mitnetz, which remained just below the limit at € 99.50, it allowed itself a deviation more than twenty times greater in the opposite direction by charging € 110.36. – Apparently a test to see how much “room for maneuver” there might still be...