Greentech Lead U.S: Asia/Pacific region will remain a
source of growth for the smart metering industry in coming years as Japan,
Korea, Oceana and even South and Southeast Asia begin to ramp up advanced
metering infrastructure (AMI) deployments, according to the latest IDC Energy
Insights Worldwide Quarterly Smart Meter Tracker.
Worldwide smart meter shipments surpassed 15.4 million
units in the third quarter of 2012 (3Q12). This represents a year-over-year
growth of 126.9 percent and a 58.6 percent increase over the second quarter,
the report said.
Growth was observed across all regions except for the
Americas, as several large projects came to completion in the previous quarter.
Latin and South America remain promising, but scale projects have not yet
emerged to replace the decline in North American shipments.
The Asia/Pacific region grew at an astonishing rate of
516.8 percent year over year and 142.02 percent sequentially. Much of this
growth can be attributed to China; Chinese utilities are beginning to equip
meters deployed under previous metering tenders with communications.
Petr Stabrawa, senior research analyst at IDC Energy
Insights, said, “The current growth in Europe looks unimpressive,
particularly when compared to some of the Asian markets. It is therefore not
surprising that the AMI industry is becoming increasingly frustrated with
Europe. At this stage, however, there are no indications that meter shipments
will pick up significantly before 2014, although more tenders will be announced
next year.”
One trend that has developed in recent quarters is the
growth of cellular AMI communications. IDC Energy Insights forecasts that cellular
will reach 17 percent of smart meter shipments in the more mature metering
markets of Europe and North America by 2016, up from less than 8 percent in
2012.
While many of the basic metering upgrades underway in
Asia/Pacific and other emerging markets are likely to deploy power line
communications (PLC), high bandwidth networks have also been deployed in other
regions.
For example, 3G and 4G-WiMax utility networks deployed in
Australia are currently being utilized as common infrastructure for metering
and distribution monitoring and control. Many of these Australian networks may
eventually be displaced by FTTP (fiber-to-the-premises) through the Australian
National Broadband Network, the report said.