reading a dutch 'slimme meter' has USB troubles

In the Netherlands the energy providers are rolling out smart meters which allow you measure your energy usage in your house. There’s a cable that you need to buy (this one) but you should be able to plug it into the raspberry and read from it.

There’s one small problem. When I try to read the USB, I get nothing back. This yields nothing now:

head -27 /dev/ttyUSB0

When I run that the bash script just hangs there. It is strange because it was running yesterday just fine. It would return a blob of text just like:

/ISK52M550E-1012

1-3:0.2.8(50)
0-0:1.0.0(181005125307S)
0-0:96.1.1(4530303433303037313335303636383138)
1-0:1.8.1(000005.811*kWh)
1-0:1.8.2(000014.353*kWh)
1-0:2.8.1(000000.000*kWh)
1-0:2.8.2(000000.000*kWh)
0-0:96.14.0(0002)
1-0:1.7.0(00.227*kW)
1-0:2.7.0(00.000*kW)
0-0:96.7.21(00011)
0-0:96.7.9(00003)
1-0:99.97.0()
1-0:32.32.0(00000)
1-0:32.36.0(00002)
0-0:96.13.0()
1-0:32.7.0(236.1*V)
1-0:31.7.0(001*A)
1-0:21.7.0(00.227*kW)
1-0:22.7.0(00.000*kW)
0-1:24.1.0(003)
0-1:96.1.0(4730303339303031383136373038353138)
0-1:24.2.1(181005125001S)(00003.957*m3)
!E278

I’ve reinstalled the raspberry from scratch but to no avail. I’ve also replaced the cable but to no avail.