China ended Q1 with 408 million installed smart meter solutions
China continues to lead the global smart meter market with approximately 408 million meters installed at the end of the first quarter of the year, according to a recent report from Navigant Research.
The study showed that the total base of installed meters in China accounted for 68.3% of tracked installations.
The report analyzes the state of the global utility electric smart meter market, tracking data related to customer endpoints, meter manufacturers, advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) communications vendors, systems integrators, and meter data management (MDM) vendors.
According to the report, the smart meter market in Asia Pacific remains fragmented, with a subset of the region’s major countries engaging in large-scale projects and many others showing limited to no activity. The study also revealed that the market potential in the region is expected to rest heavily on the success of India’s ambitious smart meter plans. Additionally, high volume deployments continue across Japan and, particularly, China, as their utilities push toward near nationwide coverage.
“As expected, progress in China continues as the State Grid Corporation of China (SGCC) approaches the tail end of its nationwide rollout in 2017,” said Michael Kelly, research analyst with Navigant Research. “Meanwhile, the North American smart meter market has seen a handful of new project announcements and some notable project updates, while in Europe, smart electric meter activity remains high as multiple national rollouts continue in varying stages of deployment.”
In Eastern Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East and Africa, smart meter uptake remains limited, according to the report. These regions still face significant barriers to entry, though large-volume project activity is on the horizon, primarily as a function of theft prevention, labor cost reduction, and grid modernization goals.
E4TC selects Elisa’s IoT smart factory solution
In related news, Finnish telecoms operator Elisa said that it has been selected as partner in the European 4.0 Transformation Center project in Germany. Elisa’s IoT smart factory solution is used in developing the production processes of e.Go’s electric car factory using artificial intelligence and 3D visualization, the telco said.
European 4.0 Transformation Center (E4TC) is a factory area of the future that is being constructed next to RWTH Aachen University. It is part of the university’s Smart Logistics cluster.
Elisa was selected as a partner for the project to provide tools for production optimization and visualization with the Elisa IoT Smart Factory solution.
Elisa’s IoT Smart Factory solution utilizes artificial intelligence to optimize the quality and efficiency of single production processes, as well as to identify bottlenecks throughout the production, the telco said. The solution is based on Elisa’s IoT product development and service platform that speeds up the development of various IoT solutions and networked devices.
In May of 2017 the Finnish telco was awarded the “Thingworx EMEA partner of the year” title by PTC, the developer of the Thingworx IoT development platform.
