Saudi Arabia Smart Meter Market Overview, 2027

Saudi Arabia is evolving in the smart construction branch and water industry, and there will be myriad ways to capitalize on making the country more sustainable. The country still burns its excess oil, much of it going to power electricity. However, the oil future isn’t sustainable. Water being a scarce resource, Saudi Arabia is investing heavily in desalination plants and heavily subsidizing tap water. A perennial problem in the kingdom is the scarcity of water. Saudi Arabia has the largest single desalination programme in the world, which meets most domestic and industrial needs. Underwater aquifers provide a limited amount of potable water, and a great deal of energy has been committed to constructing dams for water storage and to developing water-recycling plants.

According to the report title “Saudi Arabia Smart Meter (Gas, Electricity & Water) Market Overview, 2027”, published by Bonafide Research, the smart meter market in Saudi Arabia is expected to grow by over 7% during the forecast period ending in 2027. Saudi Arabia is the largest market for smart meters in the MEA region that grew by 37% historically and is further expected to grow rapidly over the forecast period. Smart metering started in Middle Eastern countries much later than other countries in the world, as a result of which smart electric meters are installed at present to the extent of 80%. Smart water meters are expected to be rapidly adopted in the residential sector over the forecast period due to various initiatives by the SMC. The various new technological evolvements are changing the IoT to deploy AMI meters across the country. Commercial and residential users form the major users of these smart meters, while industrial adoption is still in a nascent stage.

SMP (Smart Metering Project) is the project implemented by the Saudi government to reach the goal of energy conservation and emission reduction under “Vision 2030". It is one of the biggest smart meter projects in the world, with a one-time deployment of 10 million smart meters in 15 months. It is also the world's first smart meter project with the largest deployment of two advanced communication solutions, of which 4 million meters, equivalent to 40 percent of them, were built in Saudi Arabia from locally manufactured components. SMP also enables the customer to examine and monitor their consumption in almost real time with granular detail and optimize and trim their consumption patterns for maximum efficiency.

Saudi Meters Company (SMC) is the first water meters manufacturer in the Gulf Region, located in the 2nd Industrial City in Riyadh. SMC manufactures all types of mechanical water meters (Dry Multi-Jet, Semi-Dry Multi-Jet, and Wet Multi-Jet). In 2017, SMC signed an industrial agreement with Diehl Metering, a world-renowned German manufacturer of smart water meters, to localize the manufacturing of smart water meters (Hydrus) in Saudi Arabia. This technology allows the tracking of accurate water consumption and Automatic Meter Reading (AMR), thereby helping in the implementation of an ideal billing management system as per recent market trends. Furthermore, this innovation is also in line with the Saudi government’s Vision 2030 of monitoring and reducing wasteful water consumption.

Al Bustan chose a complete smart metering solution with integrated water, cooling, and electricity meters. A complete IP-based smart metering system where each meter was connected to the IP switch in each home and then through the site fibre network to the control centre. It provided the customer with the right software with a simple user interface to collect and manage all customer information and meter data needed for statistical analysis programmes and data export to billing systems. MULTICAL 602 for cooling metering, MULTICAL 62 for water meters and Kamstrup 382 for electricity metering met the technical requirements and proved to bring significant economic and operational benefits.

The Smart Water meter segment is expected to grow at a higher CAGR over the forecast period owing to the increasing demand for smart water meters to monitor and optimize water consumption, followed by the increasing requirement for accurate billing. The numerous ongoing projects, such as the development of smart cities such as Neom, the Red Sea project, Amaala, Jean Nouvel’s Sharaan resort in Al-Ula and Qiddiya entertainment city, will drastically increase the demand for water, thereby boosting the demand for smart water meters in this region. Alfanar has three types of smart meters for SEC that comply with the highest standards of reliability and compliance.

The first is the ZIV-PLC type that complies with SEC specifications 40-SDMS-02B, Rev.08 with built-in breaks, 3 phase, 4 wire system, 400 volt network, with a frequency of 60Hz. It has direct current measurement up to 100 A and short circuit withstand current up to 25 kA. It can measure real-time consumption while equipped with the communications module PLC PRIME 1.4 FCC that is built in. The second one is ZIV with a Narrow Band IoT type that has similar specifications. The third one is with the Alfanar Holly Narrow IoT type. It has other companies' smart meters too that are deployed across the country. The smart meters and their technological and communication systems are resistant to the various climatic conditions and are in conformity with the best local and international technical standards and specifications.

At the beginning of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic hit the world, with so many countries in emergency and locked down. The supply of raw materials for smart meters was seriously insufficient. Though confronted with multiple difficulties, the companies immediately mobilized the entire company by virtue of their strong supply chain system and resource integration capabilities, and overcame difficulties and expanded production capacity. Under the premise of personnel safety, they completed procurement, production, shipment, routine testing, and delivery of 2.43 million smart meters in 9 months, which gained high praise from customers. Despite the operational challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, Saudi Electricity Company managed to replace 10 million analogue meters across all its regions of service. 

Considered in this report
• Geography: Saudi Arabia
• Base year: 2021
• Estimated year: 2022
• Forecast year: 2027

Aspects covered in this report
• Saudi Arabia smart meter market with its value and forecast along with its segments
• Various drivers and challenges
• On-going trends and developments
• Five force models
• Top profiled companies
• Strategic recommendation

By type  
• Electric
• Gas
• Water

By technology 
• AMI
• AMR

By end user 
• Industrial
• Commercial
• Residential

The approach of the report
This report consists of a combined approach of primary as well as secondary research. Initially, secondary research was used to get an understanding of the market and listing out the companies that are present in the market. The secondary research consists of third party sources such as press releases, annual report of companies, analyzing the government generated reports and databases. After gathering the data from secondary sources primary research was conducted by making telephonic interviews with the leading players about how the market is functioning and then conducted trade calls with dealers and distributors of the market. Post this we have started doing primary calls to consumers by equally segmenting consumers in regional aspects, tier aspects, age group, and gender. Once we have primary data with us we have started verifying the details obtained from secondary sources.

Intended audience
This report can be useful to industry consultants, manufacturers, suppliers, associations & organizations related to smart meter industry, government bodies and other stakeholders to align their market-centric strategies. In addition to marketing & presentations, it will also increase competitive knowledge about the industry.

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Manmayi Raval

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