Pike Research (News - Alert) provides in-depth, independent, unbiased market research for global smart energy and clean energy markets as industry analysts help technology companies, investors and government agencies create sound smart strategies.

According to Pike Research, 276 million smart grid communications nodes are expected to be shipped worldwide during the period from 2010 to 2016, with annual shipments increasing dramatically from 15 million in 2009 to 55 million by 2016.

The present Research report examines the global market opportunity for communication technologies in all areas of smart grid operations, from the utility substation to the home area network, and analyzes key technology decisions that are made.

For the purpose of the report key industry players have been profiled and detailed market forecasts have been provided through 2016, taking region, application, device into consideration.

segmented by region, application, device, and technology. 

Despite the falling average selling prices per node, the cleantech market intelligence firm expects that annual revenues will increase to $3.1 billion by 2016 from $1.8 billion in 2009.

Senior analyst Bob Gohn, refuting the myth that there would be just one communications technology to rule all smart grids, predicted that in reality smart grid networks would be as diverse as the Internet, and different technologies would lead to various application categories, based on cost and performance.

Over the next several years, smart meters would swamp the market and was predicted to be the largest communications category followed distantly by home area network nodes, network interface converters and smaller node categories.

And all this boils down to the fact that the smart grid is not a network by itself, but a merger of the power network and the modern communications network and it is these two technologies that will be at the point of focus commanding singular attention by industry players.