Eichrecht Compliance: What German Law Asks of Operators

Use this article if you:

• bill drivers for charging in Germany, or plan to
• have been told your stations are Eichrecht compliant and want to know whether that settles it
• are choosing a charging platform and Eichrecht sits in the requirements

Eichrecht is German calibration law. It governs how energy is measured and billed when someone pays for it. Certified stations cover one half of it. The other half sits with whoever uses the measured values to bill. Those values have to stay traceable back to the measurement, and the customer has to be able to check them.

If Eichrecht is already in a tender on your desk, a 30-day free trial of ELVO shows you a real session and the invoice it produces.

A large station manufacturer publishes a compliance document for operators to hand to the authorities. It still tells the reader to notify the authority within six weeks of commissioning, and it names the paragraph of the law that says so. That paragraph was deleted on 1 January 2025. The document is not careless. It is older than the change. A good deal of the Eichrecht advice in circulation has the same problem, and an operator following it does work nobody asks for any more.

The line runs at billing, not at public access

Eichrecht applies when someone is billed for the energy they take. Public access is not the test. A workplace car park where employees pay falls under it. The same car park with free charging does not. A hotel that bills guests for charging falls under it, whether or not the car park is open to the street.

A common shorthand says private stations are exempt and public ones are not. That gets the right answer often enough to survive, and the wrong one exactly where it costs money. The question to ask about any car park is simpler: does the energy end up on somebody’s bill?

Situation	Is the energy billed?	Does Eichrecht apply?
Charging station on the street, driver pays per session	Yes	Yes
Workplace car park, employees pay for charging	Yes	Yes
Workplace car park, charging free for employees	No	No
Hotel or supermarket car park, charging billed to the guest or customer	Yes	Yes
Home charger on your own household meter, charging your own car	No	No
Home charger, employer reimburses the employee for the energy	The energy lands on the employer’s books	Ask before you buy the unit

The last row catches fleet managers. An employee charging a company car at home produces a figure the employer will pay against. The meter behind that figure matters, even though the installation is private.

What the station carries, and what you carry

Certification sits on the station and on the measuring capsule inside it, meaning the meter and its signing module as one certified assembly. No certification program exists for a charging platform, so no platform holds one. You keep the station’s verification valid, and you answer for the measured values afterwards.

Two duties in the calibration act land on you directly. Whoever uses a measuring instrument answers for the essential requirements being met throughout its use, including when it is connected to other equipment (MessEG § 31). And an instrument whose verification period has run out cannot keep being used (MessEG § 37).

For charging stations that period is eight years. Row 6.7 of Annex 7 to the calibration ordinance sets it for measuring instruments supplying electricity to electric vehicles and at charging points. The clock starts when the instrument is placed on the market, not when you switch it on. A unit that sat in storage for a year arrives with a year already spent.

What you may do with the measured values

German calibration law sets a separate duty for whoever uses the measured values. Those values may be used in trade only if they come from an instrument used in conformity, and only if they stay traceable back to the measurement result. The customer also needs a way to check them.

That duty sits in MessEG § 33. The same paragraph asks you to satisfy yourself that the instrument meets the legal requirements, and to obtain confirmation of that from whoever operates it.

Germany’s national metrology institute puts the practical condition plainly. Its page about transparency software says: “Messwerte aus Ladeeinrichtungen dürfen nur dann für Abrechnungszwecke verwendet werden, wenn Ihnen als Stromkunden eine von der zuständigen Benannten Stelle validierte Transparenz-Software zur Verfügung steht.” In English: measured values from charging equipment may be used for billing only if you, as the electricity customer, have validated transparency software available (PTB).

Read that as a condition on the right to bill, not as a convenience for drivers. On the billing side it means:

• the signed record has to survive the journey from station to invoice without being rewritten
• the customer needs the transaction reference and the public key, so the check is possible at all
• you need the confirmation from whoever operates the instrument, which in practice means the documentation that came with the station

One thing does not follow. The values do not have to reach your platform at all. The Open Charge Alliance is explicit on this point. A station can be compliant while keeping the values locally and showing them on a display when a customer asks (signed meter values paper). The values that do travel arrive as ordinary meter readings inside the OCPP messages your station already sends. Each one carries a signed container the station builds itself.

What changed on 1 January 2025

The duty to notify the calibration authority of a new or renewed measuring instrument within six weeks no longer exists. Article 38 of the fourth bureaucracy relief act deleted the paragraph carrying it, with effect from 1 January 2025. The paragraph now stands empty in the law.

You can read it empty in MessEG § 32, and two state calibration authorities describe the change and its effective date (LBME NRW, Mess- und Eichwesen Niedersachsen).

Supervision did not disappear with it. It runs through the verification procedures instead. And publicly accessible charging points are still reported to the Bundesnetzagentur, whose reporting portal carries a field for the station’s public key. That is a separate rule and the deletion did not touch it (Bundesnetzagentur).

Valid as of August 2026.

What your invoice has to show

Energy is billed by the kilowatt hour, measured by the verified meter in the station. Any other charge, such as time parked after charging ends or a fee for the session itself, appears on the invoice as its own line, separate from the energy. The driver has to be able to tell the two apart without doing arithmetic.

That rule decides how you build tariffs, not just how you print them. A price that folds a connection fee into the rate per kilowatt hour cannot be taken apart again by the person reading the invoice. It fails the test even when the total is correct. Keep every component priced and shown on its own, and the invoice explains itself.

Running Eichrecht billing on ELVO

ELVO keeps the OCPP messages exactly as the station sends them, so a signed meter reading arrives and stays as the station produced it. Nothing is recalculated in between and nothing is rewritten. The invoice separates energy from parking, idle time and any per session fee, and invoice labels are available in German.

If your stations already produce signed meter readings, nothing changes at the station. The readings arrive over the same connection the station already uses, and ELVO stores what the station sent rather than a figure extracted from it. That connection can run as a WebSocket over TLS, written wss, which is the encrypted form. ELVO is certified by the Open Charge Alliance for OCPP Full and Security, certificate OCA.0016.1071.CSMS, and the entry is public in the alliance register.

If you charge for energy plus something else, the pricing profile on each connector holds those as separate components: energy by the kilowatt hour, parking by the minute in tiers, idle time after charging ends by the minute in tiers, a fixed fee per transaction, and a cap on the total. Each one lands as its own line on the invoice, exactly as the German rule asks.

If you invoice customers in Germany, invoice labels come in German, VAT is set per pricing profile or per client, and each client gets its own invoice numbering series. You are not printing an English invoice for a German customer and explaining it afterwards.

What to ask before you buy stations

Eichrecht compliance is decided by the station you buy, not by the platform you connect it to. Seven questions settle it before you sign, and every one of them has an answer on paper rather than a promise in a meeting.

1. Ask for the type examination certificate for the exact model, and check the software version named on it against the firmware you are being delivered. The certificate covers a version, not a product name.
2. Ask when the verification period ends for that model, and who pays for re-verification. Eight years arrives faster than a station wears out.
3. Ask whether the station produces signed meter readings, and in which format. Formats differ between meters and the protocol does not prescribe one.
4. Ask whether the station can send signed readings to a management system, and whether that has to be switched on. On many models it is a setting, not a default.
5. Ask where the public key is shown on the station, and whether it is reported to the Bundesnetzagentur.
6. Ask which transparency software the manufacturer has tested the station’s output against. A signature nobody can validate is not worth much to a driver.
7. Ask what the driver sees on the spot if they want to check a session at the station itself.

Frequently asked questions

Is Eichrecht only about public charging stations?

No. The test is whether someone is billed for the energy. A workplace car park where employees pay falls under Eichrecht. The same car park with free charging does not. A car park open to the public but free of charge is not covered either.

Can a charging platform be Eichrecht certified?

No certification program exists for charging platforms. Type examination covers the measuring capsule and the charging station around it. A platform can carry the measured values to the invoice without changing them, and let the customer check the result.

Do the signed meter readings have to reach my platform?

Not necessarily. A station can meet Eichrecht by keeping the values locally and showing them to the driver on request. Sending them to a management system is one way to satisfy the duty, not the only one. Confirm which way your model works.

Do I still have to notify the authority within six weeks?

No. That duty ended on 1 January 2025, when the fourth bureaucracy relief act deleted the paragraph carrying it. Documentation written before that date still names it. Publicly accessible points are still reported to the Bundesnetzagentur, which is a separate rule.

How long is a charging station’s verification valid in Germany?

Eight years. Annex 7 of the calibration ordinance sets that period for instruments supplying electricity to electric vehicles and at charging points. The period runs from when the instrument is placed on the market, and an expired station cannot keep being used.

Can I bill by the minute instead of by the kilowatt hour?

The energy itself is billed by the kilowatt hour, measured by the verified meter. Other charges, such as time parked after charging ends, appear separately on the invoice. Ask the calibration authority for your state before building a tariff that departs from that.

In short

• Eichrecht follows the bill, not the fence. If someone pays for the energy, it applies.
• Certification sits on the station and its measuring capsule. No charging platform holds one, because no program exists for platforms.
• A separate duty applies to whoever uses the measured values: they must stay traceable to the measurement, and the customer must be able to check them.
• The verification period for a charging station is eight years, counted from when it was placed on the market.
• The six week notification to the calibration authority ended on 1 January 2025. Older documentation still asks for it.

Read next and resources

• What is OCPP, and what it gives you
• Billing and monetising EV charging

Sources used in this article:

• MessEG § 31, duties of whoever uses a measuring instrument
• MessEG § 33, duties of whoever uses the measured values
• MessEG § 37, verification period
• MessEG § 32, the deleted notification duty
• Annex 7 to the calibration ordinance, verification periods
• PTB, transparency software for e-mobility billing
• LBME NRW, on the end of the notification duty
• Mess- und Eichwesen Niedersachsen, same change with its effective date
• Open Charge Alliance, signed meter values
• Bundesnetzagentur, e-mobility reporting
• Open Charge Alliance certified companies register

Try it on one station

Eichrecht is decided at the station and settled on the invoice. The fastest way to see how the second half looks is to run a real session and read what comes out of it. Try ELVO free for 30 days, no card and no obligation, and put one station on a real account.

ELVO Team. We operate CPMS for manufacturers, distributors, installers, and operators across Europe and beyond.

Published 28 August 2026.