Landis+Gyr has acquired Turkey-based smart meter maker Luna Elektrik Elektronik for a “high double digit million dollar fee”, it said. It is the latest in a string of deals for the Swiss energy management company in 2021, in both the smart metering and electric vehicle (EV) charging spaces. Landis+Gyr has also announced a number of new contract wins and products for NB-ioT based smart metering.
Luna makes around $60 million in annual revenues and has around 850 staff; the deal will allow Landis+Gyr to acquire a “meaningful share” of the Turkish market, it said, where the transition to advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) has yet to commence. It will also drive sales for Landis+Gyr in adjacent markets. Luna exports low-cost solutions to a number of markets in Africa, Asia, Europe, and South America, where Landis+Gyr has a limited presence.
Landis+Gyr acquired Telia’s AMR meter reading business in Finland in July, taking over meter reading and data collection for around 23 utilities and 950,000 residential meters from Telia Finland. Landis+Gyr is working with AMI service teams in Finland that had previously worked with Telia. The deal means Landis+Gyr is working with over 60 utilities in the Nordic region; it brings the number of metering points it manages to 2.5 million in Europe and 15 million globally.
Werner Lieberherr, chief executive at Landis+Gyr, said the deal for Luna “offers a unique opportunity for Landis+Gyr, to expand [its] core capabilities in smart metering while increasing [its] offering of cost-competitive solutions with well-established manufacturing capabilities in Izmir.”
Meanwhile, Landis+Gyr has partnered with Iota, the commercial arm of water utility South East Water in Australia, to offer a new NB-IoT network leak detection sensor. South East Water has integrated 5,000 NB-IoT-based W350 ultrasonic smart water meters from Landis+Gyr in Melbourne with the new sensor device, which goes by the name Sotto. The solution detects network leaks in a radius of up to 80 metres, said South East Water.
Andrew Forster-Knight, general manager for digital utility at South East Water, said: “This technology will be a game-changer. Access to real-time network visibility will enable us to gain a better understanding of asset health and inform our maintenance schedules and planning process. From customers’ perspective, it will help to fix leaks before they cause disruptions. It will also enable us to reduce non-revenue water losses.”
Landis+Gyr won a five-year contract with Louisville Gas and Electric Company (LG&E) and Kentucky Utilities Company (KU) in August to provide new advanced metering and smart grid infrastructure. The deal includes 930,000 advanced electricity meters and 300,000 gas modules, in addition to network equipment and software. Both utilities will deploy Landis+Gyr’s Gridstream solution, linking electric and gas AMI endpoints to an NB-IoT network.
The company won a tender with Belgium-based Fluvius, a central purchasing agent for the country’s main energy distribution companies, in July to supply 2.5 million smart electricity meters and one million smart gas meters to residential properties. It also signed a 10-year deal with Public Service Electric and Gas (PSE&G) in New Jersey in the US to supply of 2.3 million smart meters, plus the underlying AMI and associated software and services.
The same month, it announced a 20-year contract with UK-based National Grid in the US around grid modernization, to “open the next wave of smart metering capabilities for utilities”. National Grid will be the first to deploy its Revelo meter, which it claims is the only residential meter to offer high-resolution sensing of streaming waveform data, supposed to enable real-time load disaggregation and decision making at the grid edge.
National Grid will deploy 1.7 million advanced electricity meters and 640,000 smart gas meter modules across its Upstate New York service territory. Landis+Gyr has also signed recently with TEPCO Power Grid in Japan, to replace and manage 28.4 million meters, as part of the largest AMI deployment anywhere in the world.
The company has been busy in the EV charging space, too. In July, Landis+Gyr also confirmed it had acquired 75 percent of the shares of Slovenia-based Etrel, a provider of EV charging solutions, in a “mid-range double-digit million euro” deal. Etrel makes hardware and software for both residential and public EV charging. Landis+Gyr has the option to acquire the remaining 25 percent of the shares in Etrel in May 2024.
The Etrel acquisition followed a deal for Denmark-based start-up True Energy, providing automatic power consumption software for EV charging, in April (a “single-digit million” euro purchase). True Energy’s software covers a large part of the value chain, including an app for smart charging, demand response to help utilities balance the grid, and load aggregation for grid operators to enable ‘peak shaving’.
Landis+Gyr is involved in various EV pilots in the UK, such as the SmartSTEP project, bringing smart EV charging to residential urban streets, and proof-of-concept activities in France to support customers in the development of “future proof technology”.
