Latin America Smart Meter Market Outlook 2027

Energy efficiency and to decrease the emissions is the major reason driving the Latin America region to adapt to smart electric meters. The tremendous increase in the economic activities has caused the region to face problems with energy efficiency consumption rates. Governments across the region are focusing on renewable energy forces to decrease these carbon emissions by deploying smart meters and technologies. Many countries have already formed policies and regulations so that users are lured to adapt to smart meters in homes as well as businesses. Another factor to push the growth of smart meter market is the climate target set by United Nations related to energy efficiency measures. The smart grid is also a driving factor for smart gas meters as it helps to reduce fuel consumption of gas heating systems. Energy wastage can be curbed to a great extent with the adoption of smart grid and smart meters thereby, enabling suppliers to monitor usage continuously.

According to the report title Latin America Smart Meter Outlook, 2027 the Smart Meter market is anticipated to grow at a CAGR of 9.07% during the forecast period. Markets in Brazil 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 Brazil, 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 10.71% 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. Latin America 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.

The adoption of smart meters in developing regions like Asia Pacific, Latin America and Middle East & Africa is quite slow as it requires large initial investments and high prices of smart meters and quality certification process that is too slow at present as compared to developed markets like North America and Europe. Though Brazil leads the regions’ smart electric meter market it has been a slow journey. The smart electric meter costs generally starts around USD 55.50 and varies according to model and features included. In addition to this fees and taxes are levied. Further, there are installation inspection fees or a real operations inspection fees. All these make it difficult for a small marginal family to adapt these smart meters and hard for companies as well to recoup the cost. AES Eletropaulo was the first power distributor to obtain smart meter certification from Inmetro in 2016 from Brazilian manufacturer Weg.

The most advanced country of southern cone to implement smart meters is Uruguay. Midway through 2019 it had installed around 95,000 smart meters and which is further expected to reach 2,00,000 units by the end of year. By 2022 it is expected to fully upgrade to smart meters with around total of 1.5 million units installed in the country. Chile started smart meter installations in 2018, but when the government announced that new meter costs were to be borne by customers, the plan suffered a big setback. The government had to take back-step due to this. Now, the rule is customer needs to voluntary request for smart meter which would slow down the rate of adoption. Chile by midway through 2019 installed some 5,00,000 smart meters under the pilots project as the final regulations were not passed until the end of that year. These installations were carried by enel Distribution, Saesa and Chilquinta.

Latin America has several players like Landis+Gyr and itron that are focused on metering solutions and automation by Siemens, Honeywell, ABB and Schneider Electric among others. Landis+Gyr has its Brazilian office in the city of Curitiba, Parana state. Italian power company ENEL in 2005 started smart meter application in the region through pilot projects in Brazil, Argentina, Columbia, Chile and Peru. Itron announced that Brazil’s Accell will be its distributor in the region and will manufacture devise along with service and support to users. Kamstrup in January 2020 acquired Danish Software Company named Blue Control for smart water meters solutions. It is expected that Latin America will reach a mark of 85 Million units of smart meters installed by the end of 2029.

The robust product deployment over the biofuel and natural gas sectors is driving the smart gas meter market in Brazil. It is now present in six states which include Sao Paulo, Rio de Janerio, Parana and Amazonas. As the region is slow and late in adoption to these smart meters it is expected it will adopt leap frogging technology rather than a sequential technology. This will mean a more proper assessment for smart grid and communication infrastructure lay down plan.

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, Aclara Technologies LLC, Holley Technology Ltd, 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: Latin America
• Historic Year: 2016
• Base year: 2021
• Estimated year: 2022
• Forecast year: 2027

Aspects covered in this report

• Latin America 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

• Brazil
• Argentina
• Columbia

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.