The penetration of smart gas meters in Europe reached 38 per cent in 2021, according to IoT analyst firm Berg Insight.

The installed base of smart gas meters in Europe amounted to 45.9 million units in 2021, equal to a penetration rate of 38 per cent. The installed base will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.7 per cent between 2021 and 2027, Berg predicts, reaching 75.9 million units at the end of the period.

Annual shipment volumes amounted to 6.6 million in 2021 and are expected to decrease gradually in the coming years with the completion of several large-scale nationwide rollouts. France, UK, Italy and Netherlands were the most active markets in 2021, together accounting for close to 95 per cent of all smart gas meter shipments during the year.

While the rollouts in Italy, France and Netherlands will soon be completed, the UK market is, after several delays, expected to ramp up yearly installations to reach a high of 3.4 to 3.6 million units per year from 2023 to 2025. Belgium and Ireland are two other markets that are expected to contribute with significant shipment volumes in the next few years.

The smart gas meters deployed in Europe have over the past years not been networked in quite the same way as their counterparts in the electricity sector. A common model, observed for example in the UK, Netherlands and Belgium, is to use a local wireless or wired interface to transmit gas data via the customer’s smart electricity meter.

A mix of 169MHz RF and 2G and 3G cellular communications has meanwhile 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. A change of the status quo might now, however, be on the horizon as new types of LPWA technologies have become more readily available in the past couple of years.

“The Italian gas sector became the first in Europe to initiate large-scale adoption of NB-IoT as a primary smart meter connectivity choice and in 2021 the installed base of gas meters with NB-IoT connectivity almost doubled in the country to reach 1.7 million at the end of the year,” said Mattias Carlsson, IoT analyst at Berg Insight.

The composition of communication technology in the installed base of smart gas meters is thus expected to shift in the coming years. In 2021, 169MHz RF was the most common communications technology with a market share of 40 per cent. By 2027, Zigbee is expected to surpass 169MHz RF to become the most prevalent connectivity option with an installed base of close to 24.9 million units.

NB-IoT and LTE-M are moreover expected to grow with an impressive CAGR of 35.6 per cent from 2022 to 2027 to reach an installed base of 10.7 million units in 2027, making it the third most common connectivity option on the European smart gas meter market.

Another emerging technology trend is the anticipated increase in the use of hydrogen in European gas supply operations.

“As the properties of hydrogen differ significantly from those of natural gas, meter vendors will have to put in place relevant technological and strategic roadmaps in order to position themselves in the new European renewable energy sector,” said Carlsson.