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Metering Points

This guide covers metering point types, configuration, and maintenance in OpenZEV.

What is a Metering Point?

A metering point identifies where an energy flow is measured, independently of the physical meter that supplies its readings:

  • Assigned to a participant over a validity window rather than owned outright — see Assignment Validity Periods below
  • Measures energy consumption or production
  • Records readings at regular intervals (typically every 15 minutes)
  • Forms the basis for invoice calculations

A single participant can be assigned multiple metering points (e.g., PV on roof + home consumption).

Every metering point also belongs to a building, the site where it is — see Buildings. The metering point's own location text says which unit within the building it measures. The page groups the metering points by building and, with several buildings, the toolbar offers a Building filter.

Metering points page

The tabs above the list count the metering points and show one view at a time: All, Active, Inactive, Needs attention and Unassigned (no participant today); click the active tab again to show all. Needs attention includes active points with no readings, confirmed data gaps, or readings without a current assignment. Unavailable quality or assignment information is not counted as a confirmed problem; loading and retry notices explain when results may be incomplete. This view covers active inventory, not billing readiness. Connected-source warnings remain visible on rows and are handled separately. Data issues appear as named red or amber text in Last reading; click one to open its data-quality view. A missing current assignment is marked in Assignment. These mark the same points counted under Needs attention, while point IDs remain plain text. A tab with nothing in it, or with everything in it, is left out; a nonempty Needs attention tab always remains visible. Below them, the search finds a meter ID, location, building or participant, and, when the community has more than one metering point type, a second row of tabs narrows to one type. A Sort menu orders the list by Meter ID (the default), Assignment, Location or Last reading (oldest first, with meters that never reported ahead of all). Each order can be reversed. You can also click Meter, Assignment or Last reading above the list, including on phones. No heading arrow appears until you choose an order. The first header click selects ascending order; click again to reverse it. Sorting stays within each building, and a group with one meter shows plain headings. The filters and the sort are kept in the page address, so a bookmark or shared link opens the same view.

If a refresh fails, the last loaded list and any open form stay available. Use Retry in the warning to refresh the list.

Metering Point Types

OpenZEV supports three metering point types:

Type Purpose Usage
Consumption Measures energy drawn from grid/community Household loads, offices
Production Measures energy fed into grid/community Solar panels
Bidirectional Combined meter (both consumption and production) A household with its own PV on one meter

Buildings

A building is where metering points are: a name, an address and, optionally, the federal building ID (EGID). It is a site, not a billing address: a participant can be invoiced somewhere other than where its meters are, and both are recorded. Buildings are managed on this page.

  • A new ZEV starts with one building, taking the issuer's address when the issuer lives at the grid connection's postal code. With a single building the meter form does not ask for a building.
  • Add building (next to New Metering Point) creates one; you can copy the address of a participant or other contact. Landowners linked to a building (see People & access) are named in its header.
  • The metering points are grouped by building, ordered by name, each building in a card of its own, whether the community has one building or several. The header shows the address, EGID, landowners and number of metering points. Add metering point (that building preselected) is in the header, and Edit building next to it. A building without metering points shows "No metering points in this building yet". Search and the other filters apply within the groups; the Building filter shows one group.
  • A building can be deleted only once it is empty: move or delete its meters first, then More → Delete building appears in its header. Landowner rows that pointed at a deleted building are kept, without a building.

Check the buildings of an existing community. When OpenZEV added buildings, every existing community got some automatically. A ZEV got one building holding all its metering points. A vZEV got one building per distinct participant address, each metering point in the building of the participant it is assigned to; meters without a clear holder went to the issuer's building. That is a guess from billing addresses, which are not always where the meters are (a landlord billed for an empty flat, a holiday home). Review the groups and correct them: move the metering points, then delete the empty building.

Creating a Metering Point

Managers create metering points in Metering Points for the selected community. A disabled community is read-only for managers; admins retain write access. If the community list cannot load, use Retry before working with its meters.

  1. Click New Metering Point

  2. Enter details:

    • Meter ID — required, unique identifier used to match imported readings to this metering point. Use the identifier supplied by your data source.
    • Secondary meter ID — second ID of the same physical meter, if any (SDAT-CH delivers consumption and feed-in under different IDs of one meter). Optional; leave empty when the meter has a single ID, or to clear an existing one. Either ID may appear in import files.
    • Type — Consumption, Production, or Bidirectional
    • Active — inventory status (defaults to on)
    • Building — only asked when the community has more than one building; with a single building the meter goes there
    • Unit within the building (optional, e.g., "Flat 3", "Common areas", "Roof solar panel")
    • Generation behind the meter — only shown for Bidirectional or Production meters; see Generation behind the meter below

  3. Click Create Metering Point

  4. To bill this meter, assign a participant: click Assign participant on its entry and set the assignment's validity window — see below.

Meter IDs must be unique across all communities on the instance, including any secondary ID configured for another meter. A duplicate is rejected when you create or edit a meter, or create meters through the community setup wizard. If an SDAT import reports an ambiguous ID in older data, ask an administrator to reconcile the conflicting IDs before retrying the import.

Tip: Active only tracks whether a meter is in inventory; on its own it does not affect billing. To stop billing a meter, end its assignment instead — see Decommissioning a Meter.

Generation behind the meter

In a vZEV, a producer's PV system usually sits behind their own grid connection meter, which is bidirectional. That meter only records what crosses the connection point — the surplus fed in once the household's own use is covered, and the residual grid draw for the times there is no surplus. This is called net (surplus) metering (Überschussmessung), and it is different from gross production metering, which needs its own, separate production meter and measures everything the PV system generates.

Everything the household consumes directly from its own PV never reaches a net meter, so it never shows up as "production" or "self-consumption" in OpenZEV's statistics. Billing is unaffected — a vZEV can only share energy that actually crosses the connection point — but a producer's own self-sufficiency rate looks misleadingly low, because the numerator (what they draw from the shared pool) barely counts their own solar use at all.

Tick Generation behind the meter (surplus metering) on a Bidirectional or Production metering point when this is the case (the checkbox is hidden for Consumption meters, since a consumption-only meter cannot have generation behind it). Once ticked:

  • The participant who personally holds that meter no longer sees a meter-based self-sufficiency rate anywhere — Energy balance, their own dashboard, the annual report, and their annual statement PDF all show — with a short explanation instead, unless they connect their own system (see below).
  • The ZEV's own kWh totals and rates are not changed or excluded — the energy is real, and billing depends on it. Instead, wherever the ZEV has a flagged meter, an explanatory note appears next to the ZEV-wide figures.
  • Metering-point lists and tables show a Surplus metering badge next to the meter ID.

If you later add a true production meter (measuring everything the PV system generates, not just the surplus), leave this box unticked on that separate meter.

To show the real self-sufficiency of such a participant, they can connect the system behind their meter (Solar Manager, or their own data by push or file). The figures are used for statistics only, never for billing, and are shown as reported by the participant's own system. See Your Own Energy Data. The connections themselves are not shown on the metering point list: you see them, and as a manager can switch one off, delete its data or remove it, on the Energy data tab of the settings. You never see or enter the participant's key.

Assignment Validity Periods

Metering points themselves do not have valid_from/valid_to fields. Date validity is defined on the metering point assignment to a participant:

  • Valid From: Assignment start date (e.g., 2026-01-01)
  • Valid To: Assignment end date (optional; leave blank for ongoing)

Assignment validity affects:

  • Which participant is associated with the meter at a given date
  • Whether imported readings can be attributed for billing
  • Invoicing — only active assignment windows in the billing period are used

Unsaved metering and assignment forms close if your account, selected community or write access changes. A failed refresh of the same community keeps your draft open. Disabling the community also closes managers' dialogs. Switching communities does not cancel a submitted save; check its original community for the result.

Assign participant modal

Example Validity Scenarios

Scenario 1: New solar installation mid-year

  • Meter installed: 2026-06-15
  • Create assignment with Valid From = 2026-06-15
  • Leave assignment Valid To blank (ongoing)
  • Result: Billing includes solar production from June onwards

Scenario 2: A new source identifier

  • The source stops reporting the old identifier on 2026-12-31
  • Create a point for the new identifier, first reported on 2027-01-01
  • Old assignment: Valid To = 2026-12-31
  • New assignment: Valid From = 2027-01-01
  • Result: No billing gaps or overlaps

Replacing a physical meter alone does not require a new metering point or assignment if the data source continues using the same point identifier.

Shared (Common-Area) Metering Points

A common-area meter — Allgemeinstrom: stairwell lighting, lift, laundry, heat pump, the shared grid connection — measures energy the whole community uses, not one household's. Every assignment has an Allocation setting that decides who pays for it:

Allocation Who pays
Personal (default) The assigned participant alone. This is how every meter behaved before this setting existed.
Community Every participant of the ZEV, split by their allocation weight.

The assigned participant does not change. A community meter still has a holder of record — usually the Verwaltung or a caretaker participant — who stays responsible for the meter in the UI, in data-quality checks, and in the audit log. Community changes only who is billed, not who holds it. The holder pays their own weighted share like everybody else, with no special case.

Assignment rows set to Community are marked with a Community badge in the metering points list — visible on the common-area meter in the page screenshot above.

Switching a meter to Community

  1. Go to Metering Points
  2. Open the meter's details (click its row) and click Edit on its assignment
  3. Set Allocation to Community
  4. Click Save Assignment

Regenerate any draft invoices for affected periods to pick up the change. Invoices that have already been sent are protected and will not change — see Invoice Management.

Switching mid-period is safe

Allocation is resolved per reading, not per invoice. A meter that is Personal in January and Community from February bills correctly on both sides of the change: January's readings go to the holder in full, February's are split across the community. No readings are lost and none are billed twice.

What gets split

For a Community meter, all of the following are divided by allocation weight:

  • Energy consumed (both the local/solar share and the grid share), including any levies and percentage-based tariffs on it
  • Energy produced, if the meter is a production or bidirectional meter — credits follow the same weights as charges
  • Per-metering-point fees (see Tariff Configuration)

Invoice lines for a community share are labelled Gemeinschaftsanteil (Community share / Part communautaire / Quota comunitaria), so they are easy to tell apart from a participant's own consumption.

Eligibility is date-accurate

A participant only shares readings from days they were actually a member. A mid-period joiner pays nothing towards community energy measured before their join date, and a leaver's share stops on their leave date.

Note: Active is an inventory status. Deactivating a community or personal metering point does not stop its energy billing or per-point fees. Assignment dates control the billing window; historical readings remain available.

What a Metering Point Row Shows

Each meter on the Metering Points page is one row that shows, at a glance (the data health of a meter is in its details, below):

  • The meter ID, an icon for its type, its location within the building (or "No location set"). A legend below the list names the icons: a bolt is Consumption, a solar panel Production, left-right arrows Bidirectional (only the types you have are listed)
  • Badges only for what is unusual: Inactive, No current assignment (the meter has readings but nobody is assigned to it), Surplus metering when Generation behind the meter is ticked, and the status of a connected energy data source when it needs attention
  • The assignment — the participant assigned today, with the start date, a Community badge for a shared meter, and "+1" when several participants hold it. A meter nobody holds shows Assign participant; click it to set the assignment's validity window.
  • The last reading date, or "Never"

Chart (the chart icon) opens the metering point's full reading history, and ⋯ More has Assign participant, Edit, Delete data (admins) and Delete. With exactly one current assignment, the menu also offers editing or removing that assignment. Point IDs and participant names are selectable text. Viewers see no editing controls.

Click a row, or the arrow at its end, to open its details in place:

  • Assignments — every assignment, current first, with its validity window and its state (Upcoming or Ended for the others). Use Add assignment, Edit and Remove here. Removal confirms the participant, point and dates, then deletes the record. When a tenant moves out, use Edit to set an end date and retain the assignment history.
  • Measurement — last and first reading, how many readings there are, and the data-health badge (Healthy, Data gaps, Data at risk, No data yet or Unavailable, based on the last 30 complete days up to yesterday); click it to open the metering point's data-quality view. A connected energy data source shows its status here too.

Meter Maintenance

Updating a Metering Point

  1. Go to Metering Points
  2. Open ⋯ More → Edit
  3. Update its ID, secondary ID, type, active status, location, or Generation behind the meter flag
  4. Click Save Changes

A secondary ID that collides with another meter's primary or secondary ID is rejected with a field error — the conflicting value is named, nothing is saved. Clearing the field removes the secondary ID. The meter card shows a set secondary ID, and search matches it as well as the primary ID.

Warning: Changing an ID changes which imported readings match the point. If the source starts reporting a different point identifier, create its point and adjust assignment windows. A hardware replacement with an unchanged source identifier needs no new point.

A point with billable or held readings cannot be deleted, moved to another community, or changed to another meter type. This protects historical billing. Use the protected import-deletion workflow, or ask an admin to use Delete data first when removal is intended. Reading deletion flags affected invoices for review. To retire a meter while preserving its history, end its assignment and deactivate it as described below.

Decommissioning a Meter

To stop billing a meter:

  1. Open the meter's details (click its row) and click Edit on its current assignment
  2. Set Valid To to the last day it should be billed
  3. Click Save Assignment

Then, if the meter is physically gone, open its ⋯ More menu, click Edit, set Active to off and click Save Changes. Deactivating excludes it from this page’s Needs attention view. It does not stop energy billing or per-metering-point fees; end its assignment from the applicable date. Historical data remains available either way.

Metering Point and Billing

During invoice generation:

  1. Resolves each participant's metering point assignments by date
  2. Loads readings from each point during the invoice period
  3. Allocates energy between local and grid (see Billing Allocation)
  4. Generates line items per metering point type

If a metering point is missing readings in an invoice period, nothing is estimated: the missing intervals simply count as no energy. The period's readiness check on Overview flags the gap before you generate, so import the missing data first — see Data Quality.

Next Steps