The installed base of smart electricity meters in China, India, Japan and South Korea will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 7.9 percent from 613.4 million in 2018 to 965.9 million in 2024, according to a report from Berg Insight. In the next six years, smart meter penetrationamong electricity customers in the region is expected to grow from 67 percent in 2018 to 94 percent by end-2024. At this pace, these markets are forecast to surpass 1 billion installed smart electricity meters and reach a penetration close to 100 percent in 2025.

The report further indicates that China is now fully deployed, and the nationwide rollouts in Japan and South Korea are well on their way, while India is now entering the center stage with massive installations expected within the coming five years. Following a few years of pilot projects, India is launching large-scale smart metering projects, driven by governmental targets to reach nationwide coverage of smart prepaid metering. With the recent re-election of Prime Minister Modi, deployments are expected to pick up pace in 2020 after a slow start in 2019.

The increase in deployments in India is mainly boosted by the entrance of the government-owned energy services company EESL. Through its demand aggregation and bulk procurement model, EESL is addressing the cost issue of smart metering investments, which is currently the main obstacle for Indian state utilities to launch standalone deployments. So far, EESL has procured 10 million smart meters to be deployed for utilities across India, which can be compared to the total installed base of less than 1.5 million meters in the country at the end of 2018.

Since EESL has made cellular point-to-point its preferred smart meter communications technology, cellular connected meters are expected to take on a central role in the coming mass-deployments. With a preference for NB-IoT-ready meters already emerging in the market, the uptake of smart meters with cellular LPWA connectivity is expected to see a sharp increase as soon as the relevant network infrastructure is in place.

Also in India, Tata Communications has recently announced it is working with Mahanagar Gas (MGL) to deploy 5,000 smart gas meters in Mumbai, while Digital infrastructure provider Tata Communications (Tata Coms) won a contract from Indraprastha Gas for the rollout of its prepaid smart gas metering system. As the first stage of deployment, 5,000 pre-paid Genesis smart gas meters have been installed in Rewari by Indraprastha Gas.

Another study estimates that the number of electric smart meters installed worldwide will reach 800 million by 2020. China is expected to have installed 435 million smart meters based on M2M technology by 2020, followed by the US with 132 million devices, Japan (58.7 million), the UK (53 million) and France (35 million). The penetration rate in Asia Pacific is forecast to reach 68 percent by 2022.