Europe’s smart electricity meters penetration approaching two-thirds

At the end of 2024, about 63% of Europe’s electricity consumers had smart meters, Berg Insight has reported.

By December 2024, more than 195 million smart meters were deployed in the EU 27+3 region, i.e. the EU member states plus Norway, Switzerland and UK, with growth at a steady rate just short of 6%, Berg Insight finds.

At this rate, with a total of close to 90 million smart electricity meters forecast to be deployed across the region from 2025–2029, the installed base is expected to reach 285 million for a penetration rate of approximately 80% by 2029.

This is driven by second-generation rollouts in countries such including the UK, Italy, Spain and Sweden alongside first generation projects in Germany, Poland and Greece.

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Indeed, first generation rollouts are expected to account for two-thirds of total shipment volumes throughout the forecast period, as second-generation rollouts in western Europe are in their final stages or fully completed.

In addition there is a focus shift away from the western European markets to central, east and southeast Europe, with the outlook for the region having improved significantly over the past years with multiple major rollouts now planned or already under way.

Overall, the CEE and southeast European region is expected to account for over half of the annual EU27+3 smart meter shipments in 2029, up from a quarter percent in 2023.

Looking only at the growth in annual shipment volumes of first-generation smart meter projects, nine of the 10 fastest growing markets can be found in CEE and southeast Europe, Berg Insight reports.

The report also notes the shift related to the type of communications technologies being used for data exchange in the smart metering market, with the rapid development of new wireless technologies for IoT communications having a major impact.

3GPP-based LPWA technologies such as NB-IoT and LTE-M are expected to account for up to almost two-thirds of annual shipment volumes throughout the forecast period.

Smart gas metering

The report also finds that the adoption of smart metering is also growing fast in the European gas distribution market.

At the end of 2023, around 44% of the natural gas customers in EU27+3 had been equipped with a smart gas meter.

This is forecast to grow to over 60% by 2029, with an increase of 76.8 million meters.

Annual shipments of smart gas meters in the EU27+3 amounted to 2.9 million units in 2023 – a decrease of 1.8 million units in comparison to 2022, largely due to France having completed the mass-deployment phase of its nationwide rollout in 2022, in combination with a slower than anticipated pace of installations in the UK.

Nevertheless, the UK was the most active market in 2023 with yearly shipment volumes of 1.3 million units while Italy and Belgium accounted for 0.7 million and 0.4 million units respectively.

Annual shipment volumes of smart gas meters are expected to remain stable at around 5–6 million units throughout the forecast period, with a significant volume of installations anticipated in additional countries, particularly Spain, Belgium, Greece and the Netherlands.