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Smart electricity meters' ICT opportunities

Tony Chan | March 3, 2009 | 0 Comments

Smart electricity meters, a new generation of power meters that will relay consumption information to the consumer and to the utilities company, will offer new revenue opportunities for the telecoms industry.

According to a new study by ABI Research, the global installed base of smart electricity meters will reach 76 million in 2009, up from 49 million in 2007. Deployments of these meters, which measure and automatically communicate detailed electrical, gas, or water usage information back to the utilities company, are accelerating, especially in North America and Europe, the report said.

“Utilities need to move to smart metering as a way to address the growth in peak demand, operate more efficiently, provide customers with better service, and respond to environmental imperatives. Smart metering can help on all of these fronts,” says senior analyst Sam Lucero. “They are encouraged in this by regulatory bodies, which use both ‘the carrot’ and ‘the stick’ to promote advances in energy distribution and conservation.”

Lucero adds that despite the current economic downturn, the market will continue to growth.

“Utilities’ smart metering deployments are typically multi-year plans developed in the context of regulated market environments, and not terribly susceptible to short-term economic fluctuations,” he said.

One of the key opportunities for the telecommunications industry identified by the report is the provisioning of home area networks which are needed to connect these meters to the utilities back-end systems and to relay the information to the consumer. Specific communications technologies considered by the study include fixed RF, powerline, and cellular.

The report also suggest that new business models may emerged as part of this trend, including M2M (machine-to-machine) mobile operators, or M2M MVNOs.

While the report seems to focus more on the core technology platforms of the meters and the communications technologies that are needed to connect them together in a network, it skims over potential opportunities in the application space.

Obviously, the adoption of smart meters and smart grids will also required new applications to managed the data and present it both the utilities and to consumers. Initiatives such as the Yello Sparzahler project between Microsoft and German nuclear power utility, Yellow Strom, as well as Google’s recently unveiled PowerMeter will also offer new opportunities for the ICT sector.

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