smart meters
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:
Smart Meters
Smart Electrical Meters, Advanced Metering
Infrastructure, and Meter Communications
NOTE: This document is a free excerpt of a larger research report. If you are interested in purchasing the full report, please contact Pike Research at sales@pikeresearch.com.
Published 4Q 2009
Bob Gohn
Industry Analyst
Clint Wheelock
Managing Director
Smart Meters
Section 1
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The electrical metering industry is undergoing the largest transformation since its founding over a century ago. Long seen as a mature, slow-growth industry serving intensely regulated, comparatively low tech utility customers, the metering community has been tasked with using advanced information technology to address some of the world’s most daunting challenges. The transformation of the basic electrical meter, often still an electromechanical spinning disk, into a smart meter, an energy information gateway aimed at fundamentally changing how energy is consumed, is a major part of this task. And it comes with unique opportunities, new challenges, and unprecedented risks.
A smart meter moves beyond basic recording of aggregate electrical use to measuring, recording, and frequently communicating energy use in granular units of time, and, in advanced forms, providing a gateway for direct or indirect control of energy use within the premises. Already, almost 3.5% of the world’s approximately 1.3 billion electrical meters can be considered “smart,” and this is forecast to grow to over 18% by 2015, representing an unprecedented opportunity beyond the usual fifteen-to-twenty year meter replacement cycle with differentiated, high value products. By 2015, annual worldwide smart meter revenues, not including broader smart grid infrastructure, software, and services, will increase more than four times compared to 2008 levels, to over $3.8 billion. The six-year period of 2009 through 2015 will see shipments of over 200 million smart
Smart Meters
Smart Electrical Meters, Advanced Metering
Infrastructure, and Meter Communications
NOTE: This document is a free excerpt of a larger research report. If you are interested in purchasing the full report, please contact Pike Research at sales@pikeresearch.com.
Published 4Q 2009
Bob Gohn
Industry Analyst
Clint Wheelock
Managing Director
Smart Meters
Section 1
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The electrical metering industry is undergoing the largest transformation since its founding over a century ago. Long seen as a mature, slow-growth industry serving intensely regulated, comparatively low tech utility customers, the metering community has been tasked with using advanced information technology to address some of the world’s most daunting challenges. The transformation of the basic electrical meter, often still an electromechanical spinning disk, into a smart meter, an energy information gateway aimed at fundamentally changing how energy is consumed, is a major part of this task. And it comes with unique opportunities, new challenges, and unprecedented risks.
A smart meter moves beyond basic recording of aggregate electrical use to measuring, recording, and frequently communicating energy use in granular units of time, and, in advanced forms, providing a gateway for direct or indirect control of energy use within the premises. Already, almost 3.5% of the world’s approximately 1.3 billion electrical meters can be considered “smart,” and this is forecast to grow to over 18% by 2015, representing an unprecedented opportunity beyond the usual fifteen-to-twenty year meter replacement cycle with differentiated, high value products. By 2015, annual worldwide smart meter revenues, not including broader smart grid infrastructure, software, and services, will increase more than four times compared to 2008 levels, to over $3.8 billion. The six-year period of 2009 through 2015 will see shipments of over 200 million smart