Analyst Insight: Transformative Smart Meter Megatrends

The evolution of smart metering has reached a tipping point in recent years, as technological leaps are, for the first time, enabling utilities to maximize the value of their AMI deployments. Whereas many first-generation smart meter deployments were plagued by underwhelming benefit streams, the combination of megatrends such as hardware improvements, communications enhancements, edge computing applications, and cost reductions, among others, have ushered in a new era of AMI.

Globally, most installed smart meters still classify as first-generation devices. However, a new wave of product enhancements is aiming to revolutionize the market by delivering real-time insights to utilities and their customers, while enabling new use cases through waveform data capture. These market evolutions coalesce with ongoing cost reductions at the hardware, communications, and software levels, opening new opportunities in developed and developing markets, alike.

This Guidehouse Insights Advanced Metering Infrastructure Analyst Insight focuses on several megatrends that are helping shape the smart meter market. It includes discussion of market drivers and barriers, hardware evolution, grid-edge intelligence, security and data privacy, and pricing shifts. Underlying the report is data from the Guidehouse Insights’ Global AMI Tracker, published in 4Q 2022.