General outline about the smart meter system in Japan: its history, specification, performance and future prospect

In Japan, smart meter deployment had begun around the early 2010’s, and the penetration rate will reach 100% as of the end of March 2025. It is a quite unique approach that the ministry has been leading and pushing the related discussion and the implementation. One utility company had launched the R&D activities about smart meter system focusing on the labor safety and the work efficiency at the early 2000’s. After the big earthquake in 2011, reflecting upon the rolling outage in Tokyo, the capital city of Japan, the discussion about the deployment of smart meter was launched by the ministry, pushing 10 electric power utilities to launch the implementation of smart meter system and complete it within around 10 years. This article shows the history, characteristics and specifications of the smart meter system in Japan, and the current status and future prospects of the second-generation smart meter system, hereinafter “#2 System”.