250M Smart Meters, $3.9B Market by 2015, Pike Research Says

By Jeff St. John

The world will have 250 million smart meters by 2015, representing a $3.9 billion market, according to a report from Pike Research released Monday.

But that growth – representing $19.5 billion in new meters installed, and an increase from about 46 million smart meters installed worldwide last year – will be uneven, according to Pike's executive summary of the report.

North America, which is set to overtake Europe as the fastest-growing smart meter market next year, will see smart meters make up 55 percent of its installed meter base by 2015, for example, while worldwide penetration of smart meters will be 18 percent by that time, Clint Wheelock, managing director, said in a news release.

The report also differentiates between "basic" smart meters capable of two-way communication of electricity consumption data, and "advanced" meters that can be remotely disconnected and, more importantly, enable so-called home area networks, or energy management systems within homes and businesses (see The Smart Home, Part I and The Smart Home, Part II).

Pike's report also noted that the big expansion in smart metering won't last forever. Government financial support - including the Department of Energy's awarding of $3.4 billion in smart grid stimulus grants last week - has broken utilities' traditional 15 to 20 year meter replacement cycle, Wheelock noted (see DOE's $3.4B Smart Grid Grant Program: The Winners).

Pike's report matches the views of other industry observers, who say smart meter makers like General Electric, Itron, Landis+Gyr, Sensus and Elster – as well as the companies such as Silver Spring Networks, Trilliant, SmartSynch, Grid Net and others seeking to provide networking and communications for those smart meters – are vying to establish their technologies in this big new round of deployments (see 8.3M Smart Meters and Counting in U.S.).

Comments

[THofler:]

I was shocked to read that smart meters will vary the electric rates with time-of-day AND according to how the electricity is used. Huh? Should I expected a political incorrectness surcharge??

Nov 02 10:50 PM