By Greentech Lead Team: Investments in Smart Grid
business will require 50 percent larger than the current annual expenditure for
all electrical transmission and distribution equipment by 2018. An investment
of $155 billion is required for major restructuring of both the supply and
demand side if a truly Smart Grid is to be realized.
Memoori’s
research report, The Smart Grid Business 2011 to 2016, forecasts that $2
trillion will need to be invested globally by 2030 where sales of Smart Grid
systems in 2010 stood at $16 billion.
According to the research,
the need to reduce CO2 emissions within the existing electricity production and
supply grid will drive the future growth of this business.
To reduce CO2 emissions the grid must be able to
incorporate renewable electricity production from a multitude of distributed sources
and be capable of matching the supply of electricity with demand at the point
of usage and in real time.
The investments in this sector have grown from $134
million in 2007 to $10.6 billion in 2011. Both the growth and now scale
indicate the supply side is gearing up to meet the requirements of new
technology and forecast demand for pure Smart Grid products and systems.
Investment in the market is also on the increase with
venture capital companies committing some $1 billion per year in 2010 and 2011
to Smart Grid suppliers. But these investments are not sufficient to meet the
demand, and clearly showing the business still has a long way to go.
According to Pike Research, the global remote microgrid
market will expand
from 349 megawatts (MW) of generation capacity in 2011 to over 1.1 gigawatts
(GW) by 2017.