OVE E 8101

Updated 2 September 2026

Austria’s low-voltage installation standard. What OVE E 8101 covers, how ETG 1992 and ETV 2020 give Austrian standards legal effect, what the 2025 edition changed, and what WireSketch does, and doesn’t, model for Austrian installations.

What OVE E 8101 is

OVE E 8101 is the comprehensive Austrian Errichtungsbestimmungen for low-voltage electrical installations, structurally and technically equivalent to the CENELEC HD 60364 series. The current edition is OVE E 8101:2025-10-01, published 1 October 2025; it replaces OVE E 8101:2019-01-01, its corrigendum OVE E 8101/AC1:2020-05-01 and the six OVE-Richtlinien R 2000-5-55N01, -5-55N02, -7-7N54, -7-7N90, -7-7N95 and -7-7N96 (all 2022-08-01), which are now folded into the main text. The E 8101 series itself replaced the older ÖVE/ÖNORM E 8001 series.

The E 8001 series is no longer part of the federal lists. Neither Anhang I nor Anhang II of ETV 2020 (consolidated text of 2 September 2026) lists any ÖVE/ÖNORM E 8001 document; the special-location parts once published as separate E 8001-4 documents (bath and shower rooms 701, campsites 708) are now Teil 7 of OVE E 8101 itself. What an Austrian designer tracks today is OVE E 8101 plus the other Anhang I and Anhang II entries relevant to the job.

The legal frame: ETG 1992, ETV 2020, Anhang I and Anhang II

The Austrian regulatory chain runs as follows:

• ETG 1992, the Elektrotechnikgesetz 1992 (BGBl. Nr. 106/1993), the federal Bundesgesetz über Sicherheitsmaßnahmen, Normalisierung und Typisierung auf dem Gebiete der Elektrotechnik. Its § 3 sets the safety objectives and lets the minister declare standards binding or publish (kundmachen) non-binding standards whose application is deemed to satisfy those objectives.
• ETV 2020, the Elektrotechnikverordnung 2020, BGBl. II Nr. 308/2020, in force since 9 July 2020 and amended by BGBl. II Nr. 329/2024 (in force 3 December 2024). ETV 2020 implements ETG 1992 and repealed the earlier ETV 2002 (BGBl. II Nr. 222/2002).
• ETV 2020 Anhang I, the list of purely Austrian standards and reference documents declared verbindlich (binding) under § 3 Abs. 1: plug-and-socket standards, OVE E 8014, OVE E 8065 and similar. OVE E 8101 is not in this list.
• ETV 2020 Anhang II, the list of standards kundgemacht (published) under § 3 Abs. 2: not binding as such, but an installation that applies them in full is deemed to meet the safety requirements of § 3 Abs. 1 and 2 ETG 1992. This is where OVE E 8101 sits. As of the consolidated text of 2 September 2026, Anhang II still names OVE E 8101:2019-01-01 (entry 2) and OVE E 8101/AC1:2020-05-01 (entry 3); the 2025 edition has not yet been added by an amending Verordnung.

Above the federal layer, Austrian Bundesländer also cite the E 8001 / OVE E 8101 documents in regional law, for example Burgenland (LGBl. B Nr. 60/2019 of 11 September 2019 and LGBl. B Nr. 73/2021 of 12 October 2021) and Upper Austria (LGBl. OÖ Nr. 28/2019 of 28 March 2019). The 2021 Burgenland citation is a transitional clause moving from E 8001 to OVE E 8101.

Who OVE E 8101 applies to

All low-voltage electrical installations in Austria, including dwellings and residential buildings, and, per its own scope clause 11.2 f, extensions and changes to existing installations and the parts they affect. OVE E 8101 is the central installation text; ETV 2020 Anhang II gives it legal effect as a kundgemachte Norm under ETG 1992.

The enforcement model: Anlagenüberprüfung

The Austrian model is post-installation Anlagenüberprüfung, an inspection of the installation by a qualified person, producing a conformity artefact. The exact German terminology for that artefact, Anlagenattest, Prüfprotokoll, Prüfbefund, Anlagenbuch, was not independently verified in WireSketch’s research and remains an open question this page does not paper over. An Austrian Elektrotechniker working under ETG 1992 / ETV 2020 will know the current name and the form the inspection report has to take; the WireSketch planner output is a design and discussion artefact only.

Key requirements

OVE E 8101 is structurally aligned with the HD 60364 series, so the baseline mirrors the rest of the European HD 60364-aligned set:

• Bathroom zones in the IEC 60364-7-701 model, as transposed by the Austrian text.
• Protection against electric shock per the relevant chapter of OVE E 8101 (the HD 60364-4-41 transposition).
• Selection and erection of wiring systems per the HD 60364-5-52 transposition.
• Special locations from the HD 60364-7 series, transposed as Teil 7 of OVE E 8101 (bath and shower rooms 7-701, swimming pools 7-702, saunas 7-703, construction sites 7-704, PV installations 7-712 and others).
• RCD type, OVE E 8101:2025-10-01 (Teil 5-53) prohibits Type AC residual current devices within the scope of the standard, that is for new installations and for changes and extensions to existing ones.
• Verification and Anlagenüberprüfung, initial verification, then the post-installation inspection regime.

WireSketch’s research did not surface a verified primary-source enumeration of Austrian-specific socket-density or circuit-count rules; the one RCD rule verified against OVE’s own summary is the Type AC prohibition in the 2025 edition. An Austrian designer will know which OVE E 8101 sections apply; this page does not invent rules it could not verify.

What WireSketch models from OVE E 8101

Honest answer: WireSketch does not yet model OVE E 8101 as a separate region. The closest selector is DIN 18015 / VDE 0100 (Germany), which is the natural neighbour for an HD 60364-aligned German-language standard. With DIN selected in Austria you get:

• IEC 60364 wet-room Zone 0/1/2 in bathroom mode, the underlying model OVE E 8101 transposes.
• Type A RCD as the default main protection, a reasonable residential baseline; the Austrian text has its own scope rules.
• Kitchen-rule dedicated circuits for heavy appliances, sensible everywhere in the HD 60364 family.
• Generic installation-zone overlays drawn from DIN 18015, useful as a planning aid in DACH territory; not a substitute for the Austrian text.

What WireSketch doesn’t model

• OVE E 8101 Austrian-specific additions, socket-density, circuit-count and RCD-scope rules specific to the Austrian text.
• The Austrian national supplements inside OVE E 8101 (the former R 2000 guidelines, now folded in) and the ETV 2020 Anhang I binding standards are not consulted by the planner.
• Anlagenüberprüfung artefact format, the exact German-language name (Anlagenattest / Prüfprotokoll / Prüfbefund / Anlagenbuch) is an open question this page acknowledges; the legal artefact in any case is not produced by the app.
• Land-level overlays, Burgenland, Upper Austria and other Bundesländer citations are not modelled.
• Network operator energisation workflow, the planner does not interface with the Austrian distributor connection-acceptance process.

Practical tip

If you are a homeowner in Austria planning a remodel or new build: use WireSketch with the DIN 18015 selector to capture the layout you want, generate the Renovation Brief PDF, and give it to your Austrian Elektrotechniker. Be explicit that the reference document is OVE E 8101:2025-10-01 within the ETG 1992 / ETV 2020 frame, and that the legal artefact comes from the post-installation Anlagenüberprüfung.

If you are an Austrian designer or inspector, treat WireSketch as a layout and client-communication tool. Translate the layout to OVE E 8101 in your own design package, track the relevant ETV 2020 Anhang I and Anhang II entries, and issue the conformity artefact in the form the regulator expects.