Greentech Lead Asia: The global smart grid spending is
likely to reach $46.4 billion in 2015 at an estimated CAGR of 17.4 percent from
2010 to 2015. The Asia/Pacific region is forecast to experience the most growth
in spending with a five-year CAGR of 33.7 percent.
Differences in ICT investments in smart grid
infrastructure by utilities are driven by differences in government mandates,
environmental regulations, and private sector support.
Utility investments in smart grid initiatives are
intended to improve grid reliability, support distributed and renewable energy,
reduce operations and maintenance costs, increase energy delivery efficiency,
improve system security, and enable energy efficiency and demand response.
According to IDC Energy Insights, Advanced Metering
Infrastructure tops investment priorities in North America in 2011.
North America distribution automation investments will
concentrate on feeder automation, volt/var optimization, and automated fault
restoration.
In Europe and Asia/Pacific regions, smart meters and AMI
investments carry the sector’s growth forward as major project deployments
begin later in the forecast period as Europe eyes its 20-20-20 goals (20
percent increase in energy efficiency, 20 percent reduction of CO2 emissions,
and 20 percent renewable generation sources by 2020).
In Asia/Pacific, China leads in the smart metering
deployment with a goal of deploying 300 million smart meters by 2020.