2020 was a key year for several targets in European energy and climate policy, including the requirement for European countries to deploy smart metering for at least 80% of electricity consumers. This target was set to ease the transition towards a consumer-centered and digitalized energy system. In fact, there are numerous applications that are facilitated or are directly linked to smart meters. Among others: demand response programs that enable consumers to be active in the energy market, and remote grid monitoring by the Distribution System Operator. In this paper, we analyze the initial provisions of the Third Energy Package and those of the Clean Energy Package, with particular focus on the recently approved directive on common rules for the internal market for electricity and the newly introduced smart meters specifications. We present the highlights of the national cost–benefit analyses for smart metering roll-out, focusing on the decisions made by the Member States with respect to a potential smart meter roll-out, that was targeted to be completed by 2020 and present the current situation of smart metering roll-out. We also present and categorize some of the R&I smart grid projects realized over recent years, focusing on the ones that deal with smart metering integration in order to depict the smart metering applications and technologies tested on the ground. Therefore, this paper portrays a full picture with respect to smart meters in Europe today and gives insights for monitoring smart metering roll-outs taking into account the current trends in smart metering applications.

The worldwide spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 forced most countries to intervene with policies and actions—including lockdowns, social-distancing and smart working measures—aimed at mitigating the health system and socio-economic disruption risks. The electricity sector was impacted as well, with performance largely reflecting the changes in the industrial and commercial sectors operations and in the social behavior patterns. The most immediate consequences concerned the power demand profiles, the generation mix composition and the electricity price trends. As a matter of fact, the electricity sectors experienced a foretaste of the future, with higher renewable energy penetration and concerns for security of supply. This paper presents a systemic approach toward assessing the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the power sector. This is aimed at supporting decision making—particularly for policy makers, regulators, and system operators—by quantifying shorter term effects and identifying longer term impacts of the pandemic waves on the power system. Various metrics are defined in different areas—system operation, security, and electricity markets—to quantify those impacts. The methodology is finally applied to the European power system to produce a comparative assessment of the effects of the lockdown in the European context.

Based on current policy targets, projections, and expectations, electricity is set to play a central role in the European Union's (EU's) economy. The ambitious goals of decarbonization and energy-efficient actions include decreasing greenhouse gas emissions by 40% in 2030 and 95% in 2050 down to below 1990 levels, increasing the renewable energy share to at least 27% of final energy consumption in 2030, and attaining 27% energy savings by 2030 as compared to business- as-usual rates of growth. Correlated electrification, decentralization, and digitalization trends suggest that the share of electricity in final energy consumption can grow from above 30% in 2030 to nearly 40% in 2050. Decentralized generation capacity could account for more than 30% of all generation capacity in 2030 and could easily exceed half of installed generation capacity by 2050. Intelligent inverters can double the distribution grid's capacity to the host photovoltaic systems. Smart meters are scheduled to reach nearly half of the EU's citizens by 2020, whereas Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices (with embedded functions that interact with the grid) could serve the majority of the EU's population by 2030.