Smart gas metering growing fast in Europe

The penetration rate of smart gas meters in Europe reached 45% in 2023 and is set to increase to about 62% by 2028, Berg Insight has reported.

In 2023 the installed base of smart gas meters amounted to 55.9 million units and at a CAGR of 6.8% is projected to reach 77.6 million units by 2028, Berg Insight’s data indicates.

The annual shipment volumes amounted to 4.8 million units in 2023 and are expected to be around 5 to 5.8 million throughout the period.

The UK, Italy and Belgium were the most active markets, together accounting for the majority of the smart gas meter shipments during the year.

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While the rollouts in Italy, France and the Netherlands are largely completed, the UK market is ramping up yearly installations to reach a peak of around 3.3 million units per year during 2024–2025.

Belgium and Ireland also are expected to contribute with significant shipment volumes in the coming years. The Spanish market is expected to reach yearly shipment volumes of 1 million units by the end of the forecast period.

Smart gas meter networking

Berg Insight highlights how the smart gas meters deployed in Europe have been networked somewhat differently from the smart electricity meters.

A common model observed in the UK, the Netherlands and Belgium is to utilise a local wireless or wired interface to transmit gas data via the customer’s smart electricity meter.

A mix of 169MHz RF and 2G/3G cellular communications has been the primary model for the largest projects in which smart gas meters have been deployed independently of smart electricity meters, such as in Italy and France.

However, with the more ready availability of new types of LPWA technologies a shift in favour of these has begun.

Italy, for example, was the first to initiate large-scale adoption of NB-IoT as a primary smart meter connectivity choice and in 2023 the installed base of gas meters with NB-IoT connectivity in that country reached more than 2.5 million.

Berg Insight anticipates that by the end of the forecast period NB-IoT/LTE-M will become the go-to connectivity option for smart gas meters in several European markets, reaching an installed base of around 13.2 million units and accounting for as much as 60% of the annual shipment volumes.

The analyst also highlights the anticipated increase in the use of hydrogen in the European gas supply, with pilots underway in the UK and Italy with metering devices capable of measuring blend of hydrogen and natural gas or pure hydrogen and that interest in hydrogen meters is likely to increase as the technology matures.