Iberdrola in Spain: Smart Rollout of PRIME Technology

Iberdrola in Spain is collaborating with Landis+Gyr to introduce smart metering technology to the Spanish market. PRIME-based communication technology has proven to work efficiently, and the utility is now targeting to install smart meters for all of its 10.7 million electricity customers in Spain by December 2018 as required by Spanish regulation.

Spain was one of the first European countries to apply regulation for smart metering. The legislation stated that all the new electricity meter installations had to be equipped with remote management and Time of Use capabilities from 2007 onwards. Furthermore, by the beginning of 2014, all utilities must have an AMM system implemented, and by December 2018 all 27 million electricity metering points would have to be replaced with smart meters.

Thanks to a regulatory environment defined early on, Iberdrola, and other Spanish industry players, had time to prepare for the change. Iberdrola started to asses various alternatives as early as 2007. Instead of choosing any of the existing technologies, the utility took an active role in an industry group that started to define new standards for smart metering technology – especially focusing on interoperable Power Line Carrier communication technologies.

Find out more about the project from this case study.