Recently, State Grid Corporation of China released the results of the second bidding for electricity meters and electricity information collection equipment in 2018, with 63 companies winning the bid for a total amount of 6.964 billion yuan, attracting the attention of many domestic electricity meter companies.
The power industry is the fundamental energy industry of the national economy. With the development of the social economy, the dependence of various industries on electricity has significantly increased, and the requirements for power supply reliability and power quality are increasingly increasing.
In order to achieve the goals of reliability, safety, economy, and efficiency of the power grid, as well as sustainable green development of the economy and society, China formulated the Smart Grid Development Plan in July 2009. According to the plan, by 2020, China will comprehensively build a unified "strong smart grid".
As one of the key terminal products in the construction of smart grids, smart meters and electricity information collection systems play an important supporting role in achieving informationization, automation, and intelligence of the power grid. In recent years, the technological progress and rapid development of the power industry and smart grid have driven the prosperity of China's electricity metering market. As the most important product in China's electrical instruments and meters, the production of smart meters has always been at a high level, and leading enterprises such as Weisheng Group, Linyang Energy, Ningbo Samsung Medical Electric, Yantai Dongfang Weisiton Electric, and Haixing Electric have emerged, demonstrating strong competitive strength in recent years' State Grid bidding.
With the rapid growth of domestic investment in smart grids, it is expected that during the 13th Five Year Plan period, China will have an additional demand for 460 million smart meters, and leading enterprises in the industry will continue to benefit in the near future.
However, with the basic completion of a round of smart meter replacement by State Grid and Southern Power Grid, the increment of China's smart meter industry market is gradually shrinking, and as a result, the competition among electric meter enterprises is further intensifying, entering a white hot stage. In the second electricity meter bidding of State Grid Corporation of China in 2018, 18 companies that continuously won the bid showed varying degrees of improvement in their rankings, while 25 companies showed varying degrees of decline in their rankings, indicating fierce competition among electricity meter companies.
In the increasingly fierce market competition, how to seek new market breakthroughs is a problem that domestic energy meter enterprises must face and think about.
Currently, countries are committed to the planning and infrastructure construction of smart grids with the goal of stable, efficient, energy-saving, environmentally friendly, and safe use of electricity. The International Energy Agency estimates that by 2020, smart grids will cover 80% of the population.
The construction of smart grids has brought broad market demand for global smart meters and electricity information collection and processing system products. It is expected that by 2020, nearly 2 billion smart meters will be installed worldwide, and smart grids will cover 80% of the population, with a penetration rate of 60% for smart meters. This is a huge opportunity for Chinese electric meter companies to explore overseas markets.
China is a major producer of electric energy meters. Currently, major products such as induction electric energy meters, electronic electric energy meters, and intelligent electric energy meters have reached or are close to the technical standards of developed countries. The production and research and development capabilities can also meet the different needs of the international market, and the price advantage is obvious, making it highly competitive internationally.
With the development of e-commerce and international trade, more and more domestic energy meter companies are trying to "go global". In emerging smart meter markets such as Asia, Africa, and Latin America, they have gained more and more market share through technological and cost advantages. In June of this year, Weisheng Group and Haixing Power won bids of 84 million yuan and 80 million yuan respectively for the "Bangladesh BREB Smart Energy Meter Project", providing prepaid smart energy meters and installation services for Bangladesh.
Therefore, domestic electric energy meter enterprises should not only pay attention to the competition in the domestic market, but also actively participate in the competition in the international market, actively introduce advanced foreign technology and business models, combine domestic advantageous resources, improve their own strength, and achieve leapfrog development through joint exploration of domestic and foreign markets.