Report Sees Smart Market Surging to $97 Billion by 2020

Within the next 10 years, more than 1 billion communication modules will be sold worldwide for use in a multitude of smart energy network (SEN) applications—across the utility, energy, telecom, IT, building automation, and automotive industries—according to a report just released by ON (News - Alert) World, a San Diego-based research and consulting firm.

As a result, by 2020, total annual revenues will reach $97 billion for the top seven SEN market categories—up from $17 billion in 2010.

This robust growth in the SEN ecosystem, an increase of 570 percent, will be driven by aggressive carbon emission targets and rising energy costs, according to the ON World report, entitled Smart Energy Networks.

What is the SEN ecosystem? While, on the traditional grid, energy flows outward to customers and data streams to providers, on the smart energy network, software agents conduct transactions on behalf of customers, and information and energy flow in all directions. The continual interaction of millions of smart agents transforms the grid from a centralized-control configuration to a collaborative network nearly as complex as a biological system. Such complex interactions are far beyond the scope of today’s power grid—ergo, the SEN ecosystem.

“Advances with sensor networking, mobile computing, and cloud services are converging with the latest energy innovations such as smart meters to create the Smart Energy Network ecosystem,” stated  Mareca Hatler, ON World’s research director. “While much of the focus has been on advanced metering infrastructure and the home area network, there are several growing markets that are gaining synergistic benefits from this emerging ecosystem.”

The top seven smart energy network market categories include: advanced metering infrastructure, distribution grid management, home energy management, smart appliances, building energy management, plug-in electric/hybrid vehicles, smart charging systems, and solar panel monitoring.

The report provides moderate and aggressive ten-year unit/revenue forecasts for each of the top markets; presents the highlights from several surveys with 800+ end-users; and analyzes the competitive landscape, comprising more than 100 companies. For more information, see the free executive summary.