By Micaela Tuckwell

According to the report,Smart Grid Technology Investment: Forecasts for 2010-2030 by Innovation Observatory over the next five years the United States (US) will dominate global capital expenditure as the US Government drives a mass-market roll-out of smart grid metering infrastructure.

This amounts to the US spending US$60 billion on intelligent smart grid infrastructure such as grid automation, communications infrastructure, IT systems and hardware, systems integration, and home area network equipment, in addition to smart meters by 2030.

Ultimately, China will be the top-spending market overtaking the US from around 2016. Catherine Viola, the reports co-author says: “China’s plans for wide-scale smart meter deployment will see it install over 360 million smart meters by 2030. We expect China’s overall spend on smart grid development to reach US$99bn by that date – more than a quarter of the global total.”

The report highlights two other emerging markets, India and Brazil, ranking third and 6th respectively in the list of the top 10 countries for smart grid investment. These countries have both announced large-scale smart meter roll-out projects.

Viola explains: "Brazil expects to replace 63 million electricity meters with smart meters by 2021, while India has plans for over 130 million smart meters."

France, Germany, Spain and the UK are the leading European countries in terms of investment in smart grid infrastructure, while Japan and South Korea complete the top 10.

As well as these global forecasts for investment in smart grid technologies over the period 2010 to 2030 the report also asses the drivers and barriers to smart grid development, identifies principal areas of technology development in terms of capital and operational expenditure.