Germany smart meter rollout (iMSys): status and targets

Two kinds of meter

German law separates two devices, and most confusion about the rollout comes from mixing them up:

• Intelligentes Messsystem (iMSys). A digital meter plus a smart meter gateway that communicates. This is the smart meter in the usual sense, and the one the rollout targets count.
• Moderne Messeinrichtung (mME). A digital meter without a gateway. Under § 29 (3) MsbG, every other metering point must have at least an mME by 31 December 2032.

The rollout is the job of the grundzuständiger Messstellenbetreiber, the default metering operator. As ZfK puts it, that is usually the local electricity network operator.

Who must get an iMSys

Under § 29 (1) MsbG, an iMSys is mandatory for:

• consumers using more than 6,000 kWh a year;
• consumers with a controllable device agreement under § 14a EnWG, such as a heat pump or wallbox, together with a control unit;
• generation plants above 7 kW installed capacity, together with a control unit.

Everyone else can be fitted with an iMSys where it is economically justifiable under § 30. Since January 2025, any customer can also request one, and the operator must in principle install it within four months.

The milestones

§ 45 (1) MsbG sets the shares that operators must reach for consumers in the mandatory cases:

Generation plants have their own schedule, based on installed capacity, also ending at 90% by the end of 2032.

What consumers pay

§ 30 MsbG caps the annual charge for an iMSys and splits it between the network operator and the consumer. For a household using 6,000–10,000 kWh, the cap is €120 a year, of which €80 is paid by the network operator and €40 by the consumer. An optional iMSys, below the mandatory thresholds, is capped at €60, split €30 and €30. Higher-consumption bands and larger plants pay more.

Where the rollout stands

pv magazine reported the Bundesnetzagentur's latest half-yearly figures on 22 September 2026:

The 20% target for the end of 2025 was missed by many operators. The Bundesnetzagentur began supervisory proceedings against 434 companies in March 2026. Of those, 77 had not installed a single iMSys. The regulator has since closed 150 proceedings, for example where the operator reached the quota later. Large operators did better on average than small ones: 29.7% for the 19 operators with over 500,000 metering locations, against 19.2% for the 591 with fewer than 30,000.

What this means for field teams

The next milestone is 90% of newly due points by the end of 2026, and small operators are furthest behind. That makes installation capacity the constraint. Operators without enough crews of their own can contract the work out, which raises the same questions as every outsourced rollout: who installed what, where, and with what evidence.

An iMSys install also has more parts than a meter swap: the meter, the gateway, often a control unit, and a working connection before the job counts. Each needs a serial, a photo and a status. PIEBENCH captures these on an offline Android app, with installation verification before work is reported and integrations to pass completed jobs on. Plans start at $199/month.

How to read these numbers

• 5.9% and 26.1% measure different things. The first is the share of all metering locations. The second is the share of the cases where the law makes an iMSys mandatory, which is what the § 45 milestones measure.
• Half-yearly data. The Bundesnetzagentur collects rollout data twice a year. We update this page after each release.

For other countries, see the smart meter rollout tracker.