Middle East & Africa Smart Meter Market Outlook 2027

The introduction of smart meters have been a fruitful innovation for the electricity distributors across South Africa as it reduces the time to resolve outrages, hardware faults and improved customer services. It is value for both end users and utility providers as it is deployed with a prepaid system in South Africa. End users can recharge their meter any time through online portals and also obtain real time data. Rapid adoption of electric meters across residential users is seen as they can monitor their actual usage and avoid peak time uses of electricity. Also, the users can keep track of electricity use on a daily or weekly or monthly basis. Municipalities across South Africa are considering deploying smart meters at a rapid pace during the future years to reduce electricity losses, promote energy efficiency, improve grid reliability and enhance billing and credit control. However, this new technology requires huge initial investments from the municipalities for operation and maintenance. The smart grid mission 2030 lay down by South Africa National Energy Development Institute (SANEDI) is expected to enhance the smart meter market in the country to raise.

WI-SUN standard RF-MESH radio frequency communications technology will be leveraged for smart meter data telemetry between the utility and the smart meter. Customers will pre pay through a self-service internet portal, Android based point of sale terminals or smart phone applications, but they can also be upgraded to a post-paid solution depending on their profiles. The project lays a foundation for SBEE to deploy distribution automation applications to strengthen the resilience of its grid in future. Itron, has multiple projects implemented in Tunisia, Kenya, Egypt, Rwanda, Morocco, South Africa and Tanzania as utilities seek to improve efficiency. Governments and the World Bank, the biggest funder for energy, are pushing hard for an increase in the penetration of AMI in Africa. Policies in the region are also changing in favour of AMI and importantly, funding which has been an issue is being addressed. At the same time, utility awareness on the benefits of AMI is increasing across the continent.

According to the report title Middle east and South Africa Smart Meter Market Outlook, 2027 the Smart Meter market is anticipated to grow at a CAGR of 10.86% during the forecast period. Markets in Saudi Arabia is more developed and expected to rapidly adapt smart meters during the forecast period. After successful adoption of smart electric meters by residential users across Saudi Arabia, the trend is now followed by adoption of smart water meters, to avoid wastage or overuse of water and ultimately save these scarce resources. AMR meters were rapidly replaced by the AMI technology meters at a CAGR of 13.80% during the historic period across Latin America region. 82% of the market share is occupied by the residential users while commercial users are gaining traction in the market towards smart electric meters. Varied software’s and applications are being developed by utility providers to ease the access and give more functionality to the users. Middle East and south Africa region has been very late in adoption of smart meters, but the scenario is changing steadily now, and is driving the growth for smart electric meters in homes.

UAE is the regional leader in smart city with Abu Dhabi and Dubai being the top ranked smart cities. These cities are the world’s top three model smart cities, with different public and private services for residents by using new technology to improve the quality of life. This includes energy, healthcare, security, mobility, economic development and housing. UAE ‘s ambitious 2050 targets of boosting energy efficiency by 40%, increased use of clean energy by 70% and reducing carbon dioxide emission by 50% to deploy smart grid and smart meters. Investing in innovation, smart technologies and digital operations has become one of the main utility focuses to fulfil energy transition. However, utilities in developed economies in Europe and North America have over the past decade intensified the implementation of smart grid programmes, lack of adequate funding and poor planning has restricted adoption in developing regions, including the Middle East. High non-technical losses due to energy theft, the inability of utilities to stabilize energy supply and demand, as well as poor consumer energy efficiency have prevailed in the region.

A number of governments in the Middle East have recently implemented subsidy reform policies and established mechanisms to provide funding towards energy modernization. Such policies are paving the way for collaboration between local utilities, technology firms and governments with international smart grid vendors and early adopters. Across all regions, the Middle East & Africa demonstrate the highest potential for growth in smart meter deployments, while the Asia Pacific accounts for the highest percentage of overall global smart metering revenue. Africa will go faster compared to Europe and the US in a bid to catch up on the delay the continent has experienced in terms of adoption over the past few years.

COVID-19 pandemic has decelerated the growth of the smart meters due to the implement of lockdown in almost all the major countries and halt the non-essential operations. This adversely affected the smart meters owing to less focus on development of end user’s industry. Apart from this, manufacturing and supply chain delays were also witnessed which poised a challenge to the smart meters. Manpower that is required for initial layout of meters and installations carried out was also affected as movement of people was restricted.

Major Companies present in the market:

Kamstrup A/S, Secure Meter Limited, Badger Meter Inc., KAMSTRUP A/S, Schneider Electric SE, Landis+Gyr, Itron Inc., Siemens AG, Xylem Inc. (Sensus), Honeywell International Limited (Smart Energy), Diehl Stiftung & Co. KG, Zenner International GmbH & Co. KG.,

Considered in this report

• Geography: Middle East & South Africa
• Historic Year: 2016
• Base year: 2021
• Estimated year: 2022
• Forecast year: 2027

Aspects covered in this report

• Middle East & South Africa Smart Meter market with its value and forecast along with its segments
• Country wise market analysis
• Various drivers and challenges
• On-going trends and developments
• Top profiled companies
• Strategic recommendation

Countries covered in the report

• UAE
• Saudi Arabia
• South Africa

By Type of Smart Meter in the report:

• Electricity Meter
• Gas Meter
• Water Meter

By End User of Solid-State Drive in the report:

• Residential
• Industrial
• Commercial

By Technology in the report:

• Automotive Meter Reading
• Advanced Metering infrastructure

By Component in the report:

• Hardware
• Software & Services

By Phase in the report:

• Single Phase
• Three Phase

By Communication Type in the report:

• Cellular Technology
• Radio Frequency
• Power Line communication
• Other Communication Types

The approach of the report:

This report consists of a combined approach of primary as well as secondary research. Initially, secondary research was used to get an understanding of the market and listing out the companies that are present in the market. The secondary research consists of third party sources such as press releases, annual report of companies, analysing the government generated reports and databases. After gathering the data from secondary sources primary research was conducted by making telephonic interviews with the leading players about how the market is functioning. Post this we have started doing primary calls to industry people by equally segmenting in regional aspects, tier aspects, age group, and gender. Once we have primary data with us we have started verifying the details obtained from secondary sources.

Intended audience

This report can be useful to industry manufactures, consultants, Key vendors related to Smart meter & Utility providers etc. In addition to marketing & presentations, it will also increase competitive knowledge about the industry.