Swiss giant gears up for smart meter market

Swiss electricity metering giant Landis+Gyr has landed $100m (£59m) in shareholder financing to help tackle the smart metering market.

Chief Executive Cameron O'Reilly said that the company is growing in the US, which makes up for what he described as a challenging trading environment in Europe.

The hope is that recent legislative moves on both sides of the Atlantic will help in the company's fortunes.

A recent vote in the European Parliament on the EU Energy Package mandated the rollout of smart meters in member states by 2022, with 80 per cent coverage expected by 2020.

The parliament also requires that all new buildings and those undergoing renovation are equipped with smart meters. This law is likely to come into effect by 2012.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration recently approved $3.4bn (£2bn) in funding for smart grid projects.

"Similar government and regulatory moves in Canada, Australia, and China are increasingly making this a global opportunity," O'Reilly concluded.

Landis+Gyr has landed over $1bn (£0.59bn) in new orders this year, doing particularly well in Australia, the Nordic countries, and the US.

The company recently installed 300,000 smart meters in Dallas through Oncor, which owns the largest distribution and transmission system in Texas.

Oncor hopes to increase that number to 700,000 advanced meters by the end of the year, expanding it to three million by 2012.

The smart meter manufacturer has also entered into partnership with Siemens to create common standards for interoperability in smart metering.