Single- or dual-tariff meter in new construction

Hello everyone,

the electrical installation will take place soon and it is clear that we will use an air-to-water heat pump.

Recently, I looked into the different electricity tariffs and found that there are only a few providers who offer heating electricity and household electricity separately (in some cases even more expensive than regular/simple electricity tariffs).

Is this still common/necessary today?
Is it mandatory when operating a heat pump to also install a second meter solely for the heat pump?

Are there possibly requirements from the local electricity provider?

My electrician/construction manager said that two meters would have to be installed

3 fields
- 1 field household electricity
- 2 field heat pump
- 3 field not occupied

On the internet, you read that only in very few cases the dual-rate meter ultimately saves costs.

I am looking forward to your opinions.
Thank you.

Sinus

Two meters and a dual-tariff meter (HT/NT) are not the same!

Ultimately, it is a calculation example.

If the discount for heating electricity is less than the additional basic fee cost of the meter, it is ridiculous to install a second meter.

Provided your electricity supplier (freely selectable in DE) does not exclude heating electricity in its conditions.

It gets even worse for the second meter when photovoltaic with EV comes on the roof.

I dare to claim that up to about 3000 kWh of heating electricity, the second meter is almost never worthwhile.

Okay, that means I would have to clarify whether our electrician wants to install two "normal" meters or one two-rate meter or two two-rate meters?

Somehow confusing...

A little tip on the side:

If you only install one meter, then have an additional sub-meter installed for the heating, unless the heating system itself records the required electricity. We forgot this and have now retrofitted it to finally know what our heating actually consumes.

Are there still newly installed HT/NT meters these days?

At least here in the region, I am not aware of any. They used to be used for storage heaters.

What the electrician wants is basically irrelevant.

You need to know what you want, whether it is allowed by the NB and whether your preferred supplier agrees.

Here, after one year, the second meter was removed.

Some people might still mentally associate "electric heating" with night storage heaters, and in those cases, two-rate meters certainly had their justification ... they still exist today. I would remove the word electric heating from the vocabulary to avoid misunderstandings.

Paradoxically, two-rate meters can also make sense precisely in very modern households with battery storage. These regularly need charging in order not to age even faster and to maintain their capacity somewhat. If the charging does not come from the photovoltaic system, that is, as soon as winter arrives, it is drawn from the grid. It might make sense to schedule this for the night. (By the way, an aspect that no manufacturer mentions in their advertising brochures. Just as little as the storage losses (10-20%) when storing photovoltaic electricity).

Whether two separate meters, one for household electricity and one for the heat pump, are economical ultimately depends on the offer from your local electricity supplier, whether they provide discounted electricity for heat pumps. Then you can calculate whether the additional meter is worthwhile. In this case, it is definitely not worthwhile.