At last month’s Enlit show in Bilbao, Spain, Quectel showed how its range of modules, antennas and services are poised to assist continued massive uptake of smart meters.

Quectel attended the event to showcase how its products are also assisting industry moves from first to second generation devices.

With deployments of smart meters, comprised of electricity, water and gas meters, exceeding 1.06 billion at the end of 2023 and set to continue in all regions, according to IoT Analytics, Quectel (www.quectel.com) is seeing growth across all meter types and expansion of meter-based use cases. Smart electricity meters are being deployed in developing markets for the first time and mature markets are accelerating deployments of second-generation smart meters to help users optimise consumption and manage their own power generation via two-way metering communications.

Growth is being experienced across all meter types. Berg Insight has reported that the installed base of water utility advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) endpoints in Europe and North America is set to double during the 2024 to 2030 period. In Europe, the firm has also revealed that the installed base of smart gas meters hit 55.9 million units in 2023. That represents 45% penetration.

While the first generation of smart meters were rolled out with the goal of simplifying and making the collection of users’ consumption data more cost effective for utility suppliers, the next generation offers richer functionality. As an example, a modern smart meter could need to communicate not only about usage but also to provide users with insights on more energy efficient behaviour.