ESMIG’s rapid growth reflects industry interest in smart metering

25 June 2010 – Brussels The European Smart Metering Industry Group (ESMIG) held its annual General Assembly this week in Brussels welcoming twelve new member companies.

Since its founding two years ago with 5 members, ESMIG has rapidly grown over six-fold in membership. This growth not only reflects the increasing importance of smart metering, but also the recognition of ESMIG as the voice of the smart metering industry in Europe.

Andreas Umbach, who was recently re-elected President of the group, says “ESMIG’s growth in the last couple of years has been nothing short of tremendous. This increase with such premier companies reflects not only the importance of smart metering generally, but is also the result of the excellent work being done by the ESMIG secretariat and the association’s members.”

ESMIG was formed in 2008 with a core membership covering the emerging smart metering industry in Europe. Membership has now expanded to 32 and covers the majority of manufacturers of electricity, gas, water and heat metering equipment in Europe. Other members cover Wide Area, Local Area and Home Area Networks for metering systems and member related interests in system integration, smart grids and smart housing. As the voice of the industry, ESMIG covers the entire smart metering value chain.

As of 1 July 2010 the following companies are ESMIG members: ABB, Accenture, Cinterion Wireless Modules, Diehl Metering, Echelon, Elgama-Elektronika, Elster, EMH, EnergyICT, Görlitz, Hager, IBM, Iskraemeco, Itron, Janz, Kamstrup, Landis+Gyr, Navetas, Oracle, Prolan, Sagemcom, SAP, Secure Meters, Sensus, Siemens, Sierra Wireless, Sigma Telas, StreamServe, Telit Wireless Solutions, Toshiba TRL, Vodafone and ZIV.

In line with the increase in its membership, ESMIG’s involvement in European standardisation and policy discussions has also expanded. The industry group is actively involved in the European smart metering standardisation mandate, M/441, where it is chairing the Smart Metering Coordination Group’s ad-hoc working group on communications.  Furthermore, ESMIG is represented in all groups of the European Commission’s  Smart Grids Task Force and there chairs the data security and protection expert group.

ESMIG also has a number of association and cooperation agreements throughout the industry with partners such as CEN, CENELEC, DLMS, ETSI, KNX, OPEN meter and ZigBee Alliance. ESMIG membership is open to any supplier of smart metering or advanced metering goods and services to utilities in the European Union.