Success in the smart meter market

In recent years, business opportunities in the smart meter market are gradually expanding. In order to achieve energy-saving and carbon-reducing smart grids, governments of all countries are fully investing in smart meter deployments, which in turn drives the growth of smart meter shipments year after year, and encourages the growth of revenue for related component suppliers.

At present, all countries in the world are committed to the development of smart grid infrastructure in order to ensure the safety, quality, and economy of electricity use. An important part of the successful operation of the smart grid is the complete and immediate collection of electricity user information. As a result, the advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) at the intermediate end of the supply and use of electricity will become the smooth development of the smart grid. The key equipment; and to complete the AMI construction infrastructure, you must first install a smart meter, it also prompted the world to give priority to the smart meter construction.

Supporting the AMI specifications of various countries in the smart grid market AMIs from the front-end to the back-end include a smart meter, a data concentrator, an analysis application system, and a communication network that links all hardware and software devices. Among them, the smart meter is composed of a measurement module, a control module and a communication module. Among them, the most important component is a microcontroller (MCU). Smart meters can be roughly divided into low-voltage single-phase and high-voltage three-phase categories. Single-phase smart meters are mainly used by ordinary households, while three-phase smart meters are mainly commercial. Smart meters currently have a variety of different specifications, including US ANSI C12, IEC IEC 6205x, EU's EN50470-X, Australia's AS1284.x, and China's own Q/GDW37x specifications.

As for the concentrator, it refers to the central management equipment and control equipment of the remote centralized meter reading system. It is the central node for network transmission and is responsible for reading terminal data, command transmission, data communication, network management, event recording, and horizontal data transmission. Functions; communication networks are divided into public or private wide area networks, regional networks, and other communication technologies such as ZigBee, Power Line Communication (PLC), Overall Packet Radio Service (GPRS), Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Terminal (ADSL), etc. The system refers to the Meter Data Management System (MDMS), which can integrate, analyze, and manage the acquired power information and provide the analyzed data to power companies, consumers, and third-party entities for application and Added value. For example, it integrates with the back-end power company ERP related application software to improve the efficiency of power management and the quality of customer service.

National policies support the surge in the penetration rate of smart meters. In order to promote the construction of smart grids, advanced countries began to prioritize the deployment of smart meters in 2008. Since electricity meters have a large number of users, it is not easy to allow users to accept them and replace them on a large scale in the short term. Most countries will first adopt policy plans and allocate funds to conduct smaller-scale and experimental demonstration projects, and gradually Large-scale popularization. With the promotion of national policies, the penetration rate of global smart meters and related infrastructure have continued to increase, and it is expected that they will be widely used after 2020.

At present, there are about 1.7 billion meters in use around the world. If it is replaced completely with smart meters, the market size will be considerable. From 2012, global smart meter shipments reached 100 million units, up 31.6% from 2011. According to market research agency IDC, global smart meter shipments in 2015 will reach 163 million units, with a compound annual growth rate of 15.4%. The In-Stat study also pointed out that the global smart meter market revenue forecast will exceed 12 billion U.S. dollars in 2016, and the smart meter penetration rate will reach 59% by 2020. Market research firm PikeResearch estimated that the global smart meter installation volume will reach 963 million units in 2020.

AMI manufacturers can be divided into two major categories, namely, meter suppliers and AMI technology suppliers. Smart meter suppliers mainly provide electricity meter hardware facilities. Most of them are transformed from traditional meter manufacturers. The top three global market share are Itron, Landis+Gyr, and Elster. Others include Seneus, GE, SilverSpring, PRIMeters, Iskraemeco, etc. Companies; and AMI technology vendors provide communications, MDMS, or system integration-related technologies and services, including eMeter, SilverSpring, Itron, EnergyICT, Oracle, Aclara, Ecologic Analytics, IESO, IBM, and Atos. Among them, because AMI is a complete system and integrates technologies and components in different fields, system integrators are an important player in the development of AMI, including IBM, Accenture, and Atos.

Mainland China/Europe demands high smart meter shipment growth. Looking at the global smart meter market, the United States and Europe are among the first countries to be built and have a large population. Therefore, they are currently the fastest-growing and most-demanded markets. However, because the United States has reached its peak in 2011, the growth momentum has started to slow down; in Europe, due to the large number of countries, many countries are still catching up and there is a lot of potential for growth in the future; Asian countries started to promote later, but due to Japan, The active promotion of South Korea, as well as the large population advantages of China and India, has become a rapidly growing emerging market for installations. It is expected that in the next 5 to 10 years, the growth momentum of smart meters will be mainly in mainland China and Europe.

As for the manufacturers part, there are currently a few household appliances, chips, or MDMS manufacturers in Europe and the United States. Since they entered the market earlier and hold technology, they dominate the global market; however, in the future, countries will gradually develop local regional AMI-related manufacturers to provide The huge market demand in the region, especially in emerging markets such as mainland China, cannot be overestimated. With the implementation of protection policies, some manufacturers may even squeeze into the top ten global markets.

Responsible for the high cost of smart meters to challenge the industry chain to promote the downstream integration trend In the factors affecting the development of the smart meter market, the first major source of power is from the government's policy promotion. Observing the global smart meter market, it can be found that all governments are propped up and promoted through regulations, subsidies, or counseling policies. Due to the large number of users of electricity meters and the lack of public awareness, in the early stage of the promotion, there is a certain amount of difficulty in requiring immediate replacement. Therefore, most countries start with small-scale demonstration plans and then gradually promote them gradually.

Only a very small part, such as Germany, is promoted through an industry-led approach, but its effectiveness is still unsatisfactory. Therefore, the scale and development of the current global market mainly depends on the government's driving force and progress. However, in addition to the government’s policy promotion as the main driving force for market growth, consumer acceptance has also become the key to popularity. For example, some US citizens have doubts about the impact of building smart meters on privacy, safety, and health. The provision gives the public the right to choose whether or not to install it, thus affecting the progress of smart metering. In addition, the high cost of smart meters, and whether they can have more features to enhance the added value, is also the key to consumer acceptance, which in turn affects smart meter penetration.

In the AMI system, since the electronic meters have to be analyzed and applied by the MDMS, the value of the electronic meters can be truly realized. Therefore, many countries have attached importance to the manufacture and deployment of hardware equipment in the past and have turned to the design and development of software. This global development trend is also related to AMI has the same trend in the construction of countries around the world. Besides the time it takes to start construction, there are also technological capabilities. At present, Europe, the United States and other advanced countries have turned to the active development of MDMS, while countries such as South America, Asia, and Australia are actively manufacturing hardware equipment for electricity meters. The MDMS for software is still in its infancy. In order to quickly acquire related software technologies, many international large-scale meter manufacturers have begun to integrate MDMS vendors upward. To better master the AMI market, many power plants have started to integrate information and communication technology (ICT) vendors. On the whole, the manufacturers in the AMI industry chain are moving up and down the vertical integration model. The purpose is to increase the technical energy, and gain the advantages of software and hardware integration, in order to more smoothly enter the AMI market.