Urging for an Increase in the Minimum Requirement for Solar Balconies

As the first signatory, the German Environmental Aid (DUH) supports a petition to the Bundestag for simplified approval of balcony power plants. Together with many other actors, the DUH is calling on the legislator to increase the minimum limit for the use of balcony power plants from 600 watts to at least 800 watts, to temporarily tolerate backwards rotating meters and to introduce simplified registration exclusively with the Federal Network Agency.

Furthermore, there are calls to adapt both the Civil Code and the home ownership law to the current climate-political realities.

"Anyone who wants to install a solar module on their balcony must be able to do so easily," emphasizes Barbara Metz, Federal Managing Director of the DUH. So far, however, the legislator has been putting obstacles in the way of the energy transition at home. DUH is calling for the amendment of the Civil Code, Section 554, Paragraph 1, and the reform of the Home Ownership Act, Section 20.

Andreas Schmitz, Youtuber and initiator of the petition, says that numerous network operators are currently denying interested users of balcony power plants approval because no modern electricity meter has yet been installed. “This is an absurd situation, because it is self-inflicted. In our petition, we are therefore calling for the Metering Point Operation Act (MsbG) to be amended in such a way that backwards rotating meters are also permitted on a transitional basis."

"By changing the National Ordinance on the Verification of Electrotechnical Properties of Energy Systems (NELEV), we want to use the petition to introduce an exception for systems with a net output of up to 800 watts," says Sebastian Müller, Chairman of the Balkonsolar Association and co-initiator of the petition.