Countless smart grid and meter opportunities drive market growth to $10.4 billion by 2022

Everyone wants to know what their accurate electric energy flow is, so when smart meters were invented to regularly record and send the information to the supplier over Wi-Fi, a new market opened up. Smart meters are already popular worldwide and have already been implemented in a number of countries, including Australia, Canada, Japan, United Kingdom, Spain, United States, Malta, Ireland and New Zealand.

In fact, the European Union plans to “replace at least 80% of electricity meters with smart meters by 2020 wherever it is cost-effective to do so,” reads their website, and further claims “this smart metering and smart grids roll-out can reduce emissions in the EU by up to 9% and annual household energy consumption by similar amounts.” In countries such as US, South Korea and Japan there is also legislation to encourage large-scale smart meter roll-out.

In 2017 as many as 88.2 million smart meters were installed globally with a global market value of $7.1 billion. Specialists from data and analytics company Global Data forecast the global smart meter market will reach some $10.4 billion by 2022, growth induced by “rising emissions, domestic energy resource constraints, ageing infrastructure and the growing demand and cost of electricity.”

According to Subha Krishnan, Power Analyst at GlobalData, because China is more interested in creating new infrastructure for “reliable and cheap electricity,” the country will not be as focused on installing smart meters.

“Despite the growth, significant challenges remain such as high meter pricing, lack of supportive incentives, poor meter standards, regulatory shortcomings and resource management. However, as the market grows, it is expected that favorable regulations, cost reduction, and progressive technology development could alleviate some existing challenges,” Krishnan added.