It is one of the more successful petitions that were brought to the German Bundestag: the YouTuber Dr. Andreas Schmitz and several organizations simplified balcony power plants and used the official route of Parliament. The petition had 101,877 co-signers by the end of April. It took 50,000 for the Petitions Committee to deal with it. On May 8, Schmitz was then heard by the committee as a petitioner.
As a petitioner, Schmitz was initially given five minutes to present the matter. He used this to describe his experiences in registering a small PV system. After his network operator had insisted on a Wieland power socket for registration, he withdrew the registration – but not the plug of the system. Not an isolated case, as he noted with a view to studies and feedback from his own YouTube community. The specific demands of the petition: changing the limit for simplified registration from 600 to 800 watts, tolerating reverse-rotating electricity meters until the network operators replace them with digital meters, and changing the Home Ownership Act (WEG) and the German Civil Code.
PATH Changes
In the question and answer session, each faction was allowed to ask questions in two rounds. Andreas Schmitz, his companion Christian Offenhäusle and Stefan Wenzel, Parliamentary State Secretary from the Ministry of Economic Affairs, answered the questions of the committee’s parliamentarians. The required changes to tenancy law took up the most time in the question and answer session. Andreas Mattfeldt from the CDU wanted to know whether it would not be an unreasonable encroachment on property if landlords and condominium communities can no longer decide whether balcony power plants may be installed in the future. Specifically, it is demanded that the systems, like the e-car charging infrastructure, be included in the WEG as privileged measures (section 20 paragraph 2 WEG). Both State Secretary Wenzel and the petitioner rejected this criticism. The aesthetic sensibilities of landlords and apartment owners must take a back seat
The biggest point of contention in party politics was the question of implementation. The members of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group accused the government and the Ministry of Economics of having only announced but not delivered – although they would support the petitioner’s demands. CDU MP Sepp Müller pointed out that his parliamentary group would introduce its own draft law in May that would overlap with the demands in the petition.
State Secretary Wenzel referred to the practice of the legislative process: the Federal Government has already anchored many of the petition’s demands in its solar strategy. His ministry is already working on a draft law that will include, among other things, the toleration of counters running backwards. This will be brought “immediately” to Parliament. When it came to the changes to the WEG, he referred to the Ministry of Justice – a representative from Buschmann’s ministry was not present at the meeting.
Towards the end of the session, Andreas Schmitz took the opportunity to point out the importance of balcony power plants. According to the petitioner, the small systems would not achieve the energy transition on their own, but would relieve grids through decentralized generation and, above all, lead to a change in awareness and adapted usage behavior. Those who have installed such a device prefer to consume electricity in the hours of sunshine and more sparingly.
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