Smart meter penetration in North America
October 21, 2011
A new report from Berg Insight shows that the installed base of smart electricity meters in North America will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 22.5% between 2010 and 2016 to reach 87.4 million at the end of 2016.
Over the next five years, smart meter penetration among residential electricity customers in the US and Canada is projected to increase from around 20% in mid-2011 to more than 50% by the end of 2016. It is anticipated that the region will have close to 100% penetration by 2020.
The US federal government and many states have successfully stimulated the demand for smart metering solutions through a combination of financial incentives and regulatory requirements. Full-scale rollouts are now underway at nearly half of the largest investor-owned utilities, as well as among hundreds of municipals and electric cooperatives.
California and Texas have passed legislation that require smart meters for all electricity customers and regulators in other major states such as Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Georgia have given their approval for smart meter plans proposed by utilities.
In Canada, Ontario completed the first major rollout of smart meters in early 2011 and new projects now underway in British Columbia and Québec will increase penetration for smart metering in the country to around two-thirds of all households. Wireless mesh networking technologies dominate the smart meter communication marketplace in North America. Most of the leading vendors provide solutions that use the license-free 900 MHz frequency band. Alternative technologies such as cellular networks and power-line carrier are however starting to gain more traction. TNMP, an electric utility with 230,000 customers in Texas, will deploy the first large-scale smart metering system in the US using point-to-point GPRS communication until 2016.
