Burgeoning opportunities with the increase in demand in smart city initiatives

The smart water metering market is expected to be valued at US$ 3,359.84 million in 2022 and is expected to reach US$ 5,954.65 million by 2028; it is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 10.0% from 2022 to 2028.

Asia Pacific is anticipated to be the third largest region in the smart water metering market in 2022 and is projected to retain its dominance during the forecast period as well. The smart water metering market size in Asia Pacific is likely to undergo a rapid transformation as a result of enhanced focus on metering, market consolidation, and evolving business models in the region.

The smart water metering market growth is expected to spike up in Asia Pacific as governments intervene to reduce non-revenue water, lower operational expenditures, and achieve better demand management. Also, metering-as-a-service and static metering technology models are expected to intensify the smart water metering market scenario in Asia.

Utilities have realized the importance of increasing cost recovery in ensuring the financial and environmental sustainability of the water supply. Also, healthy investments from the private sector would improve the smart water meter penetration in the region.

China and Australia are anticipated to be the pioneering nations in the commercial deployments of smart water meters in Asia Pacific. Both these countries are intending to capitalize on the emergence of IoT, Big Data, and analytics, thereby harnessing their powers to achieve better results with smart water meters. 

Further, ambitious digital initiatives in other Southeast Asian countries have spurred strong government support for smart water meter rollout. For instance, Singapore is taking significant steps to promote digital water technologies. In November 2022, Singapore’s national water agency PUB started utilizing an Itron industrial IoT network canopy for the smart water metering applications from SP Group.

This network would connect ~300,000 C&I and residential smart water meters while promoting water conservation goals. The installation of new water technologies is an integral part of PUB’s Smart Water Meter Program that projects to change the organization into a smart utility. The first phase of a smart water meter program will be introduced in Bukit Batok, Jurong West, Hougang, Tampines, and Tuas. Such developments are expected to drive the smart water metering market growth.

The investment involved in installation and deployment of smart water meters is comparatively much higher than that of traditional systems. This is because smart water meters have various advantages in monitoring, checking, and reducing non-revenue water costs.

The wired or wireless smart water meters are integrated with sensors, data loggers, communication devices, and data management systems that sense, record, and transfer the data to the cloud or designed storage platform that is usable by the operator at any point in time.

In addition, the pipelines range hundreds of miles from water treatment plants to their destination, and the water management authorities need to deploy large numbers of smart meters to monitor the pipelines owing to limited bandwidth. This factor also incurs huge investments. Owing to high initial investments, several developing countries are restraining the deployment of such advanced technologies, negatively impacting the smart water metering market growth.

Water scarcity or illegal tampering or tapping of water is a serious concern prevailing in developed as well as developing countries across the globe. Various governments and private organizations are actively participating in creating awareness among water management authorities of respective countries or areas to mitigate water scarcity problems. However, due to the lack of knowledge among the mass in terms of advanced water management technologies, sufficient deployment of smart water meters is lacking in several areas worldwide. This factor is hindering the smart water metering market growth.