Smart Meter Market to Reach $50.82B by 2031, Growing at 10.0% CAGR

PPL Electric Utilities has been selected to receive up to $71.5 million in federal funding from the U.S. Department of Energy to support the Montour Grid Resilience and Advanced Reconductoring Project, a modernization of an existing 230-kilovolt transmission corridor. The funding comes through the DOE's Speed to Power through Accelerated Reconductoring and other Key Advanced Transmission Technology Upgrades (SPARK) Program. The project will rebuild approximately 29.3 miles of existing transmission line, replacing aging infrastructure with advanced technologies to strengthen reliability, enhance available capacity and support growing energy needs in the Susquehanna Valley, Greater Lehigh Valley and Northeast Pennsylvania. It will deploy advanced conductors, using a combination of Aluminum Conductor Steel Supported (ACSS) and Aluminum Conductor Composite Core (ACCC) conductors on targeted segments, along with dual optical ground wire to expand the corridor's fiber network and demonstrate Distributed Acoustic Sensing technology. PPL Electric Utilities President Christine Martin said the funding will help the company modernize critical infrastructure and minimize costs for customers, while U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright said the investments will get more out of existing infrastructure and deliver affordable, reliable power. Over the coming months, PPL Electric will work with the DOE to negotiate and finalize the terms of the award.

Camus Energy has joined the newly formed AI Energy Management Alliance as a launch partner, alongside technology industry leaders including Google and NVIDIA. The alliance is a first-of-its-kind coalition dedicated to advancing flexible AI data centers that dynamically adjust their power draw to provide relief during periods of peak grid stress. Camus will help guide AEMA's mission to align data center expansion with grid reliability through flexible interconnection and intelligent energy management, and will help shape technical standards, market definitions, and public policy for integrating large-scale data center loads into the grid. The company's FlexConnect software enables data centers to connect to the grid up to five years faster using flexible operating limits and existing infrastructure, bypassing multiyear grid expansion plans and customer rate increases. Camus Energy provides grid management and orchestration software to major hyperscalers and U.S. utility partners that reach seven million utility customers, and was founded and led by distributed computing experts from Google and Amazon.

Bualuang Securities released an analysis stating that the development of Thailand's smart grid is nearing a turning point, moving from a phase focused on long-term roadmaps toward rule-setting, pilot project implementation, and greater private-sector participation. The medium-term smart grid drive plan for 2022-2031 comprises 5 pillars: Demand Response and Energy Management Systems, or DR & EMS, which accounts for roughly 30% of the budget; Renewable Energy Forecasting, or RE Forecasting, about 10%; Microgrid and Prosumer, about 20%; Energy Storage Systems, or ESS, about 25%; and EV Integration, about 15%. The analysis states that stocks that could benefit under the DR & EMS pillar include SKY, PIS, FORTH, PCC and ALT, while the RE Forecasting pillar includes TKC and SAMART. The Microgrid & Prosumer pillar includes BGRIM, the ESS pillar includes EA, GPSC, GULF and EGCO, and the EV Integration pillar includes FORTH and EA. Bualuang Securities takes the view that heavy investment in ESS and Microgrid should not be rushed from the early stage, because committing large amounts of capital to batteries, hardware and EPC work before pricing mechanisms and service markets are clear carries the risk of assets being underutilized. Meanwhile, DR/EMS forecasting and EV Integration require less capital and open up opportunities to generate revenue from platforms, service fees and recurring income.