A new report by Innovation Observatory estimates that worldwide, utilities will collectively invest more than $378 billion in building electric smart grids between now and 2030.  However, the upgrades will not be uniform, with more than 80 percent of the investments concentrated in just ten countries.

According to the report, the United States will dominate global capital expenditure (capex) for the next five years, driven by the federal government’s stimulus funding of the mass-market deployment of advanced smart metering infrastructure. Innovation Observatory says the smart grid upgrade in the United States will cost $60 billion, including the meters, grid automation, communications infrastructure, IT systems and hardware, systems integration, and home area network equipment.

However, the report predicts that ultimately China will spend more than any other country, with the annual smart grid capex overtaking the United States around 2016.

The reports co-author, Catherine Viola says, “China’s plans for wide-scale smart meter deployment will see it install over 360 million smart meters by 2030. We expect China’s overall spending on smart grid development to reach $99 billion by that date—more than a quarter of the global total.”

Viola says two other major emerging market forces are India and Brazil, which make the top ten countries for smart grid investment, ranking third and sixth respectively. “Both India and Brazil have announced massive smart meter roll-out projects. Brazil expects to replace 63 million electricity meters with smart meters by 2021, while India has plans for over 130 million smart meters.”

The other countries that make up the top ten are France, Germany, Spain and the UK in Europe in terms of investment in smart grid infrastructure, and Japan and South Korea in Asia.

There will be intense competition to sign contracts with utility company in these leading smart grid markets, says Innovation Observatory, because “the sheer scale of the investment is creating a huge appetite to supply. Technology suppliers will need to tailor their strategies for different geographic regions, and adopt different approaches depending upon their size, their legacy industry expertise and the specific part of the smart grid value chain they serve.”

The report, intended for metering manufacturers, distribution/substation automation equipment vendors, software vendors, communications technology suppliers, is available at http://www.innovationobservatory.com/reports/latesttitles, for GBP1500.

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