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Markets will surpass 1 billion installed smart electricity meters in 2025

India, China, Japan and South Korea set to surpass 1 billion installed smart electricity meters in 2025 according to the report.

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DQINDIA Online
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Over the next six years, smart electricity meters  penetration among electricity customers in the region is projected to increase from around 67% in 2018 to 94 percent by the end of 2024. At this pace, Berg Insight anticipates the markets will surpass 1 billion installed smart electricity meters and reach a penetration close to 100% in 2025.

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Levi Ostling, IoT analyst, Berg Insight, said: “With China now fully deployed, and with the nationwide rollouts in Japan and South Korea well on their way, India is now entering the center stage with some massive installations expected within the coming five years.

“After a few years of pilot projects, India is finally starting to see large-scale smart metering projects being initiated, driven by ambitious governmental targets, to reach nationwide coverage of smart prepaid metering. With the recent re-election of PM Modi, deployments are anticipated to pick up pace in 2020 after a slow start in 2019.”

A major driver of the increase in deployments in India is the entrance of the government-owned energy services company, EESL. Through its demand aggregation, and bulk procurement model, EESL is effectively addressing the cost issue of smart metering investments – currently the main barrier for Indian state utilities to launch standalone deployments. So far, EESL has procured 10 million smart meters to be deployed for utilities across India, which can be compared to the total installed base of less than 1.5 million meters in the country at the end of 2018. Despite intense price competition and the introduction of a national smart meter standard in 2015, India is, in comparison to the East Asian markets, relatively open to the international vendors.

Wireless RF mesh networking technologies have been favored in early standalone deployments of smart meters in India. Since EESL has made cellular point-to-point its preferred smart meter communications technology, cellular connected meters are however expected to take on a central role in the coming mass-deployments. With a preference for NB-IoT-ready meters already emerging in the market, the uptake of smart meters with cellular LPWA connectivity is expected to see a sharp increase as soon as the relevant network infrastructure is in place.

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