Last week's announcement of $3.4 billion in stimulus funds for utilities was big news for smart meter makers. Almost every recipient of the money said they would be using it to add millions of advanced meters to their coverage areas. Now major meter maker Landis+Gyr has proved that the government grants will stimulate private investing in the sector, raising a new $100 million from its current backers.
The Swiss company says it will use the funds for a fast and dramatic deployment of smart meters, and not just in the U.S. -- it will look at rolling out its hardware in Asia, Australia and Europe as well. Smart metering in the European Union is actually far ahead of U.S. initiatives, due in part to an aggressive mandate that 80 percent of homes must be equipped with smart meters by 2020 and 100 percent by 2022.
Landis+Gyr might actually be facing its toughest competition in the U.S., where Itron is giving it a serious run for its money. The latter emphasizes that it offers the same networking infrastructure as Silver Spring Networks, while also providing the metering hardware and now home energy management interfaces since its September partnership with OpenPeak. Echelon has also captured a slice of the market, tapped by large Duke Energy to provide meters.
Landis+Gyr is looking to add these services and more as it produces more meters than it ever has before. It will be interesting to see if it innovates its own solutions or turns to an acquisition strategy to diversify its technologies.
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