After a turbulent year for energy companies, what lessons can the sector learn from the smart meter rollout? Simon Egan, managing director UK, Ireland and Netherlands at Landis+Gyr believes the devices have a key role in helping millions of consumers who have shifted to home working take control of their energy use. Egan further describes how innovative new finance models are helping smaller suppliers increase their market share of meters.

While retaining its market leadership in Europe, Landis+Gyr has been presiding over a rapidly changing marketplace. 

Landis+Gyr was the supplier of choice for a country-wide rollout in the principality of Liechtenstein.

Landis+Gyr delivered a comprehensive smart metering solution covering the entire European principality of Liechtenstein. The publicly owned utility Liechtensteinische Kraftwerke (LKW), the sole supplier of electricity in the country, decided to implement Landis+Gyr’s Gridstream® end-to-end solution to optimize customer service, enhance awareness of power quality and facilitate outage detection.

With the acquisition of PowerSense, a manufacturer of high-quality supervision and control systems for the power distribution industry, Landis+Gyr has strengthened its smart grid offering. Customers stand to benefit from a cost effective, scalable and modular technology which has already proven itself in a large rollout and perfectly complements Landis+Gyr’s core portfolio.

For the first phase of the nationwide rollout of smart meters in The Netherlands, Landis+Gyr has supplied smart electricity and gas meters to all Dutch DSOs.

Dutch grid operators are obliged to offer all residential customers a smart meter for both gas and electricity, while customers have the right to opt out. To gain experience of implementing smart meters, and to carefully monitor the process in its early stages, the initial – small-scale – rollout is limited to meter replacements and installations in newly built and renovated houses.

Choosing the right kind of smart metering solution is a crucial strategic decision for utilities to take as an initial stage of their smart meter project planning. When drafting the tender for a smart metering rollout, a utility’s leadership team must be prepared to answer two basic, but very important questions: What can we do ourselves? What must we subcontract and have others do for us?