A new study from Juniper Research found that hardware, connectivity and service revenue from smart meter deployments, and in use, will exceed US$60 billion in 2027; up from US$41 billion in 2023.
This 44% growth reflects how smart meters are becoming critical to increasing the efficiency of energy grids via analytics; central to lowering costs to customers during the energy price crisis.
A smart meter records energy usage and leverages onboard connectivity to upload this data to energy suppliers.
Hong Kong is in the top 5 of most smart metre rolled outs
By 2027, the research forecasts Italy will have the highest household penetration rate of smart meters globally, at almost 100%. Italy has had mandatory smart meter installations since 2006, setting an example for the wider market. The top five countries were ranked as follows:
Italy (99.6%)
UK (98.7%)
Saudi Arabia (98.4%)
Hong Kong (98.4%)
UAE (97.4%)
The research recommends utility companies focus on educating consumers on the benefits of smart metering, as these benefits are often unclear to them. Utility companies should focus on the potential for saving energy, with evidence-based use cases to catalyse adoption.
Key opportunity for IoT
The smart grid network encompasses local area networks, home-area networks, access networks, clusters of connected LANs and HANs called NANs, and wide-area networks.
The research found that, with over 1.8 billion smart meter connections forecast to be in use by 2027 globally, smart meter connectivity represents an important opportunity for cellular networks and low-power IoT connectivity. The low data usage of smart meters lends itself naturally to low-power IoT, but as cellular networks are the only networks capable of providing ubiquitous access in some markets, they clearly still have a role.
Report co-author Nick Maynard explained: “While smart meters have come a long way in deployment terms, they are only as good as the connectivity they leverage. Utility companies must aim to aggregate the best networks for their locations, or they will fail to obtain the benefits smart meters can readily provide.”
The Juniper Research paper, Combating the Energy Crisis with Smart Grids, concludes that investing in smart grid deployment yields significant benefits for the environment and society. These benefits are summarised below.
