India amongst the top in global smart grid investment

By siliconindia   |   Tuesday, 15 February 2011, 21:37 IST
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India amongst the top in global smart grid investment
Bangalore: Utilities all over the world will collectively invest more than $378 billion in building electricity smart grids by 2030, according to a report by Innovation Observatory. However, 80 percent of this capital spend will be concentrated in only ten countries. U.S. is likely to dominate global capital expenditure (capex) over the next five years. Report says that the U.S. will spend $60 billion on intelligent smart grid infrastructure by 2030, which includes grid automation, communications infrastructure, IT systems and hardware, systems integration, and home area network equipment and smart meters. India ranks third among the top ten countries for smart grid investment while Brazil is on the seventh rank. "Both India and Brazil have announced massive smart meter roll-out projects," said Catherine Viola, the report's co-author. India has planned for more than 130 million smart meters while Brazil is expected to replace 63 million electricity meters with smart meters by 2021. China will be the top-spending market. Its annual smart grid capex is likely to overtake the U.S. from around 2016. "China's plans for wide-scale smart meter deployment will see it install over 360 million smart meters by 2030", says Viola. The overall spending of China on smart grid development is expected to reach $99 billion. Other European countries leading in terms of smart grid infrastructure investment are France, Germany, Spain, U.K, Japan and South Korea. Report also says that the there will be intense competition to win contracts in these leading smart grid markets. There will also be need for technology suppliers to alter their strategies and approaches depending on the geographic regions, their size, industry expertise and the specific part of the smart gird chain they serve.