Croatia’s HEP to buy smart electricity meters worth EUR 86.5 million

Croatia’s power utility, Hrvatska Elektroprivreda, has launched a tender for the purchase of smart meters worth EUR 86.5 million. The procurement is part of a modernization project co-financed by the European Union through the National Recovery and Resilience Plan.

HEP said that it plans to install smart meters at all metering points in Croatia by the end of 2029, Forbes reported. The company has almost 2.5 million metering points.

According to data from the beginning of 2023, all metering points with a connection capacity higher than 20 kW were equipped with meters for remote reading. This represents about 18% of all metering points in the category of entrepreneurs.

Remote reading is possible for 12.4% of households, HEP said. In total, about 16.2% of all metering points were included in the remote reading system.

The procurement is part of a larger project worth EUR 286 million

Croatia’s distribution system operator, HEP-Operator Distribucijskog Sustava (HEP-ODS), is in charge of  procurement. DSO has 21 distribution areas.

The procurement of smart meters is a continuation of HEP-ODS’ efforts to introduce advanced metering under the Croatian distribution grid modernization project. The project is valued at EUR 286 million, of which EUR 156 million are grants from the National Recovery and Resilience Plan.

Of note, in 2020 HEP-ODS started implementing the EUR 24 million Smart Grid Pilot Project.

Consumers will gain a more detailed overview of their consumption

The procurement is divided into four distribution areas. For each of them, the DSO will purchase single-phase and three-phase smart meters for households and businesses, G3-PLC data concentrators for communication links between smart meters and the advanced metering management (AMM) system, as well as multifunctional meters for substations.

In addition to enabling remote reading of consumption, the smart meters will reduce the operating costs of the distribution grid, HEP noted.

The system will also enable billing based on actual monthly consumption, the company said. This improvement will increase the transparency and accuracy in billing.

Consumers will also have access to more detailed data about their consumption, which will help them improve their energy management, HEP ODS stressed.