The smart electricity metering market in Asia Pacific is inching ever closer to the historic milestone of 1B installed smart meter devices.
A new regional snapshot from analyst’s, Berg Insight, says installed smart electricity meters will grow from 818.6M units in 2023 to nearly 1.2B units in 2029—a compound annual growth rate of 6.4%. Meaning the goal of hitting 1B installed devices will happen mid-2026.
East Asia—namely China, Japan, South Korea & Taiwan—has led Asia Pacific’s adoption of smart meters, representing 90% of the installed base in the region at the end of last year. Successful nationwide rollouts are the reason why, but it’s been—and remains—uneven.
For example China has now completed its campaign and Japan is in the end-phase of its rollout, with both countries now replacing first-generation smart meters. But South Korea has suffered delays and will finish the national rollout by the end of this year, while Taiwan has so far installed just 2.8M smart meters.
East Asia may be the most mature, but the fastest growing markets are now in South and Southeast Asia. The most significant is expected to be India where a massive new governmental funding scheme was introduced in the early 2020s with the goal of achieving the installation of 250M smart prepayment meters.
Australia is ramping up too, though from a fairly low base. The national government—under the direction of the Australian Energy Market Commission or AEMC—plans to see 100% of homes with smart meters by 2030—starting with a compulsory roll out in 2025.
That time line could face delays however, given consumer concerns about some aspects of smart meter installation, and in particular perceived additional costs. The AEMC is running a public consultation till November to address some of those issues in any final roll out.
It also raises all sorts of issues for home cabling industry here but we’ll talk more about that once the AEMC signals they’re ready.
Berg Insight snapshot: https://media.berginsight.com/2024/06/21194105/bi-smapac6-ps.pdf