Court justifies "customer systems" decision

08.07.2025

Source: E & M powernews

The Federal Court of Justice has now provided the reasons for its last-instance ruling, according to which two specific combined heat and power plants with a downstream electricity grid are considered a distribution grid.

"Here I stand now, I poor fool, and I am as wise as before" - this quote from Doctor Faust may come to mind for anyone who reads the reasoning behind the "customer systems" ruling by the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) in Karlsruhe in mid-May. The court of last instance recently published the wording of the decision. Until then, only the decision as such had been known (we reported).

In the 17-page decision, the BGH Cartel Senate explains why it rejected Engie Deutschland's appeal against a ruling by the Dresden Higher Regional Court (OLG). Like the two previous instances, the BGH thus ruled in favor of the Saxon state regulator and the distribution system operator ZEV Zwickauer Energieversorgung against Engie.

In 2020, Engie had installed two CHP units (20 and 40 kWel) in Zwickau for two residential blocks of a cooperative with 96 and 160 residential units, which were previously connected directly to the Zwickauer Energieversorgung (ZEV) distribution grid on the electricity side, including domestic grids for electricity and heat. It wanted to obtain a total of two main electrical connections and metering points for the CHPs from ZEV as well as recognition as "customer installations" - without success in all instances, including the European Court of Justice (ECJ).

What "customer installations" are all about

The "customer installation" is an exception to grid regulation for certain constellations with electricity generation and a domestic grid. As such, it offers contractors, district and tenant electricity providers various bureaucratic advantages and the flexibility to set their own final electricity prices. Following the conclusion of the Engie versus ZEV series of proceedings, this exception must be defined more narrowly.

With reference to the EU's Internal Electricity Market Directive, the guiding principle of the rejection decision in Karlsruhe reads: "Only an energy installation that is not a distribution network can be a customer installation if interpreted in accordance with the Directive." But when is an energy system a distribution network? As soon as the requirements of a distribution network according to the directive are met. And when are they met?

The requirements of Green Planet

"The BGH does not clearly indicate where this demarcation line is drawn," complains Carolin Dähling, Head of Division at tenant electricity provider Green Planet Energy. She believes that grid operators must continue to enable home distribution systems and thus tenant electricity, but that the necessary legal certainty is still lacking even after the court ruling. Green Planet is therefore calling on the government and Bundestag to "now create a new, clear regulatory framework that also enables larger tenant electricity and neighborhood projects with legal certainty". At the same time, the Federal Network Agency should provide practical guidance.

The Federal Court of Justice has published its decision on customer installations, including the reasoning behind it, in the Juris database.

Author: Georg Eble