Customer Portals for Municipal Utilities: Why They Need to Do More Than Just Track Meter Readings
The process of switching technical providers now takes place within 24 hours, smart meter data must be made available, and as of June 2025, the Accessibility Enhancement Act will also apply to municipal providers. As a result, the requirements for municipal utility customer portals have increased significantly in a short period of time. We’ll show you what a portal needs to be able to do today and when in-house development pays off.
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This is a situation that every municipal utility is likely familiar with: After sending out annual bills, numerous customers call with questions about additional payments, and customer service becomes overwhelmed. Customer portals are designed to handle this flood of inquiries.
However, new requirements have been placed on these portals for some time now: switching providers has been simplified, smart meter data is mandatory, and the Accessibility Enhancement Act has been in effect since June 2025.
In this article, we’ll take a closer look at what customer portals must now be able to do, where technical bottlenecks lie, and when a custom portal is a better choice than a standard one.
Switching providers is no longer an exception for municipal utilities
According to the Federal Network Agency, approximately 6.7 million households switched electricity providers in 2025; the figures were already similar in 2024. Switching providers is therefore no longer just a money-saving tip, but has become part of everyday life for both providers and consumers.
This is also supported by Section 20a of the Energy Industry Act (EnWG): According to this provision, starting in June 2025, a technical switch of electricity suppliers must be possible within 24 hours on business days. However, this does not apply to the entire process from registration to the start of service; for this, Section 20a(2), sentence 1, stipulates a deadline of 3 weeks from the date of registration.
The implication for portals: There is a much smaller window of opportunity for customer retention; after all, customers can switch to a competitor within a single business day.
A survey conducted by the Handelsblatt Research Institute on behalf of SPS among 134 decision-makers in the energy supply and grid operations sectors makes it clear that there are still issues here. Just 15 percent of respondents rate digital customer engagement in their own companies as very advanced. So there is a huge amount of ground to make up in this area.
Among the most important tasks that customers want to complete on portals are:
- Reporting Meter Readings
- Viewing Your Own Usage
- Adjusting advance payments
- Viewing bills and contracts
- Updating master data
- Reporting a change of address
- Changing your rate plan
Municipal utilities should focus, above all, on the relative importance of these tasks. Experience shows that adjusting estimated bills generates the most calls. The issue of moving is also sometimes tricky, because deregistration, registration, final billing, and meter readings all need to be coordinated.
A functional and easy-to-use portal reduces the workload on employees and can convince customers to stay with that provider. Moving is a particularly good time for this, since many people are already considering switching providers at that point.
Smart Meter Data: From Mandatory Reporting to Portal Content
Smart metering systems have been mandatory for some time now. Section 45 of the MsbG was amended in February 2025, and every metering point operator must equip 90 percent of all relevant metering points with smart metering systems by the end of 2032.
Currently, operators are at various stages of implementation, and smaller companies in particular are reaching their limits. As of the December 31, 2025, deadline, 23.3 percent of mandatory installations across the industry had been equipped; however, among meter point operators with fewer than 30,000 meter locations, the average was only 14.6 percent. The Federal Network Agency publishes these rates on a company-by-company basis and reserves the right to take regulatory action; failure to comply may result in heavy fines.
This, too, creates new requirements for portals: Customers with smart meters want to see accurate readings and transparent pricing, while customers with standard meters must still be able to enter their own readings. Both scenarios must be implemented simultaneously.
Accessibility in the Customer Portal: A Topic That Is Often Overlooked
The BFSG (Act to Strengthen Accessibility) has been in effect since June 28, 2025. Section 1, Paragraph 3, Item 5 generally applies to portals, as it concerns services in electronic commerce—that is, websites and apps through which consumers can enter into contracts. The technical requirements specified in EN 301 549 and WCAG 2.1 must therefore be met; otherwise, high fines may be imposed.
Many municipal utilities base their practices on BITV 2.0 or the Disability Equality Act and state regulations, even though these apply only to public agencies. The BFSG applies to economic actors and thus also to municipal enterprises engaged in economic activity.
A transitional provision is set forth in Section 38 of the BFSG; however, there is no grace period for existing portals that have been further developed after June 28, 2025. It is therefore advisable in all cases to consider accessibility as a fundamental aspect during the development and enhancement of portals. This also benefits older customers, who make up a large portion of the target audience.
In addition to electricity, many municipal utilities also sell gas, heat, and water, and—depending on the municipality—may also offer fiber-optic internet, parking, public swimming pools, and public transportation tickets. This results in different requirements for portals.
Each contract account must combine multiple service categories so that customers do not have to log in again for every inquiry. In addition, the processes vary depending on the service category. For example, switching water providers is not common, and heating has different billing cycles than electricity.
It is also worth noting that the individual divisions of a municipal utility often have their own brand names, and these should remain recognizable.
Many standard portals are not suitable for this purpose, as they were developed based on the logic of simple electricity billing portals and cannot accommodate the necessary complexity. In this case, a customized customer portal is recommended.
AI Chatbot in the Customer Portal: Useful or Risky?
Many municipal utilities would like to have a chatbot on their portal. While this can be useful for some customer inquiries, it can be risky for others.
A chatbot is well-suited for recurring informational questions whose answers can be found in documents to which the bot has access. Such questions might include:
- How do I read my meter?
- How do I switch providers?
- I’ve moved—what should I do now?
It is important to note that the language model uses only information from documents provided by the company to generate responses (retrieval-augmented generation). If the chatbot were to respond using training data, it could produce inaccurate responses that might confuse customers even more.
Things get tricky when it comes to any topics involving specific contracts. In these cases, it is absolutely essential that only data from the billing system be displayed, and not any freely worded responses. In addition, users should be able to quickly reach a real person if the chatbot cannot help.
In any case, an AI assistant must be clearly identifiable as such at all times. Specifically, this has been required since August 2, 2026, under Article 50 of the EU AI Regulation, and must be evident no later than the first interaction. The much-cited postponement under the Digital Omnibus applies only to high-risk systems; this transparency requirement remains unaffected.
In addition, chatbots should only access content that has been approved for the person making the request. They must also be accessible to all users.
We recommend starting by developing an assistant that handles the 20 most common inquiries, complete with source citations and the ability to transfer the inquiry to service representatives. This can be implemented quickly and is more effective than an assistant with too many requirements that it cannot reliably fulfill.
A standard portal or a custom solution?
| Criterion | Arguments in favor of the standard portal | Arguments in favor of in-house development |
|---|---|---|
| Business Segments | Primarily electricity and gas | True multi-utility business, possibly multi-brand |
| Differentiation | A portal is a must | Service is part of the brand promise |
| System Landscape | Introductory Billing System | Multiple line-of-business systems, CRM, online store, app |
| Processes | Close to industry standards | In-house approvals, campaigns, special cases |
| Resources | No in-house IT capacity for operations | Team or partners available for further development |
| Time Horizon | A quick solution for the next few years | A platform designed to last ten years |
A key consideration is the dependence on the portal provider that arises from using the portal. This should be carefully weighed—after all, the portal is the most important customer channel.A less elegant but cost-effective interim solution might be to retain the standard portal for basic processes while placing selected workflows—such as moving or adjusting advance payments—in front of it.Integration of the Customer Portal into the Billing System
It is important to understand that a customer portal is merely a user interface; the data behind it (e.g., contract details, meter readings, and invoices) is stored in other systems, typically in billing or ERP systems such as SAP IS-U, Schleupen, Wilken, or kVASy. Three questions are important to consider here:
- Where does each piece of information come from?
- How up-to-date does the data need to be? Some information needs to be updated immediately, while for other information, once a day is sufficient.
- What happens if there are errors? If a system is currently unavailable, the portal must decide what to show customers.
It is particularly important that a portal not store and manage data itself as well. Otherwise, there will be two different versions of the same information, which can lead to serious chaos.
Why Portal Projects at Municipal Utilities Fail
- Too many features: Development takes too long, and in the end, none of the features work reliably.
- Integration too late: The interface is ready, but there are problems retrieving data from the billing system.
- Lack of promotion: Customers aren’t made aware of the portal.
- Lack of subject-matter decision-makers: Important decisions are postponed, and the project drags on.
The solution is simple: core features for the launch, integration of the billing system starting with the first sprint, a well-thought-out communication plan for the rollout, and clear subject-matter responsibility.
Customer Portals for Municipal Utilities: Key PointsDue to accelerated switching processes, the need for meter data to be visible, and accessibility requirements, the demands placed on energy providers’ customer portals have increased significantly.Nevertheless, it’s worth taking a step-by-step approach to development rather than building everything at once. It is more important that key functions—such as adjusting estimated payments and updating addresses—work smoothly and reliably. Other features can be added over time.How BAYOOTEC Supports Portal Development
We have been developing custom software for over 25 years and have been active in the energy and utilities sector for many years. Some of our developers and architects also bring academic expertise in the energy sector to the table, which makes all the difference in projects when it comes to market roles, deadlines, and data formats.
We don’t commit to a specific technology upfront. We select the appropriate platform based on existing systems, business requirements, and the team that will eventually operate the portal. What all implementations have in common is a cloud-native architecture—which can handle even the peak load following the sending of bills—and “security by design” with clear role- and access-based concepts, encryption, and traceable logging. This is particularly relevant for customer portals, as they serve as a central hub for consumption and payment data. For us, digital accessibility is a core service in its own right—not an afterthought. For UX and user research, we collaborate with our sister company, UID.
Are you planning to launch a customer portal or considering replacing your existing one? If so, let’s sit down and discuss your processes and your system landscape. Feel free to contact us, and together we’ll identify where you can make the biggest impact.
