Germany's new smart-meter mandate blocks PV plants from feeding in — and operators wait a year for the installation.
Since 1 January 2025 every new German PV plant of 7 kilowatts installed power or more has needed a certified Smart Meter Gateway (the iMSys, or intelligentes Messsystem) before it can legally feed a single watt into the grid. The device has to be installed by the regional metering operator. On the operator board photovoltaikforum.com, owners and project developers describe waiting four months, six months — sometimes more than a year — for a technician with the right hardware to show up. The build loan keeps accruing. The twenty-year EEG (renewable-energy feed-in law) revenue clock has not started.
01The pain
A 100-kilowatt solar array sits finished on a Bavarian roof. It cannot feed a single watt into the grid because the regional metering operator has not installed a Smart Meter Gateway (iMSys — the certified digital meter and communication box every new German PV plant of 7 kilowatts and up has needed since January 2025).1 The build loan keeps accruing interest. The EEG (Germany's renewable-energy feed-in law) twenty-year revenue clock has not started.
The mandate comes from two German laws: the GNDEW (a 2023 act restarting the digitalisation of the energy transition) and §29 of the Energy Industry Act (EnWG, which governs grid metering).1 They make the iMSys a precondition for commissioning, EEG feed-in tariff payments, and Direktvermarktung (the wholesale-market sale of solar output, mandatory above 100 kilowatts).2 Until the grundzuständige Messstellenbetreiber (the default metering operator, usually the regional grid company) installs the device, the plant is built but legally idle.
Operators have a statutory right under the Metering Point Operation Act (MsbG) to switch to a competing Messstellenbetreiber, a private metering provider like Inexogy, VOLTARIS or GWAdriga.3 Most do not know that right exists. The Bundesnetzagentur (Germany's grid regulator) reports the iMSys rollout has reached only a fraction of its statutory target.4 On photovoltaikforum.com, one Bayernwerk customer posted in early 2025 that he had been waiting "1 year and 5 days" for the installation.
Further reading
- 1 gesetze-im-internet.de — §29 Messstellenbetriebsgesetz (MsbG): statutory equipment duty for grundzuständige Messstellenbetreiber, including intelligent metering systems for installations above 7 kilowatts installed power (German, official consolidated text): gesetze-im-internet.de/messbg/__29.html
- 2 photovoltaikforum.com — "iMSys-Einbaupflicht seit 1.1.2025": operator thread discussing the practical effect of the 1 January 2025 iMSys installation obligation on new PV plants (German): photovoltaikforum.com
- 3 gesetze-im-internet.de — §6 Messstellenbetriebsgesetz (MsbG): right of the Anschlussnehmer to select a competing Messstellenbetreiber instead of the grundzuständiger Messstellenbetreiber, including bundling and conversion procedure (German, official consolidated text): gesetze-im-internet.de/messbg/__6.html
- 4 photovoltaikforum.com — "Wartezeit imSys Bayernwerk": multi-year operator thread on iMSys waiting times with the Bavarian default metering operator Bayernwerk, with concrete wait-time data points from 2022 to 2025 (German): photovoltaikforum.com
02Who solves this today
Five German-market vendors that publicly market themselves as solving exactly the gap the iMSys mandate opens — competing Messstellenbetreiber for PV operators, Smart Meter Gateway-Administrators for utilities, and certified Smart Meter Gateway hardware. Each homepage was checked live on the date of writing. The list is intentionally narrow.
Adjacent vendors were considered. Octopus Energy Germany (octopusenergy.de) sells dynamic-price electricity tariffs that need a smart meter but does not self-market as a Messstellenbetreiber and is not catalogued here. 1KOMMA5° (1komma5.com) sells PV, heat-pumps, wallboxes and the Heartbeat AI dynamic tariff but does not market a stand-alone competing-MSB service on its homepage. Theben (theben.de) sells KNX, lighting and timing hardware — adjacent OEM, not an MSB. PPC AG (ppc-ag.de) is the long-established Smart Meter Gateway maker but its homepage returned HTTP 500 at the time of writing, so it is excluded until reachable. The Bundesnetzagentur (BNetzA), the regional grid operators (Bayernwerk, Westnetz, Mitnetz and others) and the legislator are referenced in section 01 as the national regulator, the default metering operators and the source of the mandate respectively, not third-party solution providers.
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Operators discussing this
These are real German PV operators talking about this pain in their own words on the Photovoltaikforum. They are the reason this page exists.
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«Ich warte bis heute auf den Einbau, d.h. bis jetzt schon 1 Jahr und 5 Tage.»
"I am still waiting today for the installation — that is, already 1 year and 5 days now."
Wartezeit imSys Bayernwerk · Photovoltaikforum — thread opened 4 December 2022, runs across 33+ pages with latest activity 30 January 2025; at least twelve distinct posters on the latest two pages document a multi-year operator arc on the same Bayernwerk iMSys backlog.
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«Die 25 Euro Mehrkosten im Jahr wären verschmerzbar.»
"The 25 euros of additional annual cost would be bearable."
Laufende Kosten IMSys? · Photovoltaikforum — opened 4 February 2026, four distinct posters within 24 hours debating whether the mandatory iMSys yearly fee is worth the smart-wallbox tariff it unlocks. Fresh thread inside the last 12 months.