A recent study from clean-tech market analyst firm Pike Research (News - Alert) estimated that as many as 238 million smart meters will be deployed across Europe over the next nine years, with cumulative investment in smart grid technologies totaling $80.3 billion by 2020.
Meanwhile, the U.S. smart grid optimization solutions market in the U.S. is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate of 40.1 percent from 2010 to 2014, driven by the integration of renewable energy generation, according to a report out of Technavio Intelligence.
If you didn’t think that was mind-blowing enough, an entirely new report from analyst firm Berg Insight is now circulating statistics on what smart meter penetration will look like in North America over the next five years.
According to the research report, the installed foundation of smart electricity meters in North America will cultivate at a compound yearly growth rate of 22.5 percent between 2010 and 2016, only to reach an astounding 87.4 million at the end of the 2016.
In other terms, this means smart meter penetration among residential electricity end-users in the U.S. and Canada is expected to more than double from around 20 percent as of mid-2011 to more than 50 percent by the end of the five-year period. Even further, Berg Insight projects the area to trickle close to 100 percent penetration by 2020.
“North America has been at the forefront of metering innovation for many decades and is now embracing the latest smart technologies that improve grid performance,” said Tobias Ryberg, senior analyst for Berg Insight and author of the report, as reported by m2mworldnews.com.
This anticipated growth, according to the report, can be attributed to ongoing legislation for smart meter installation in a range of U.S. states, including California, Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Georgia. Meanwhile, Ontario, Canada just finished the first significant introduction of smart meters earlier this year, with new projects in the works in British Columbia and Quebec.
As a result, these smart metering developments will bring the U.S. neighbor closer to two-thirds of households having smart metering in place.
The report goes on to state, “The U.S. federal government and many states have successfully stimulated the demand for smart metering solutions through a combination of financial incentives and regulatory requirements. Full-scale rollouts are now underway at nearly half of the largest investor-owned utilities, as well as among hundreds of municipals and electric cooperatives.”
The report also revealed that wireless mesh networking technologies now make up the majority of the smart meter communication sector in North America, with many top vendors delivering solutions that utilize the license-free 800 MHz frequency band.
Meanwhile, other technologies are starting to emerge, including cellular networks and power-line carriers. One electric utility in particular, TNMP will launch the first-ever large-scale smart metering system in the U.S. that uses point-to-point GPRS communication.
Tammy Wolf is a TMCnet web editor. She covers a wide range of topics, including IP communications and information technology. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.
Edited by Jennifer Russell