Meet Linky: France’s smart meter, which talks to consumers

Author: Håkan Ludvigson, CEO, Eliq

With over 10 million ‘Linky’ smart meters installed, currently at 8 million installs per year, France grid operator Enedis has hit full speed to complete its 30 million+ meter installs real soon!

Eliq has contracted with Enedis, capturing data at the source

Serving utilities with tools, such as mobile apps, for energy insights and customer engagement, Eliq has integrated its platform with Enedis, to directly collect data from the meters. The solution is independent of integration with the utility’s billing software, seeing as we’ve yet to see support for half-hourly data and data consent management from common billing software in France. In this way, Eliq can plug in to almost any French utility in a matter of weeks and roll out new energy insights tools to customers.

What’s going on in the French energy market?

The the French energy market has been a slow mover, with state-owned EDF controlling ~80% of the market many people still are not aware that a choice of energy suppliers is available. It looks like things are starting to change.

When started looking at the French market two years ago, apart from the growth of challenger brand Direct Energie, things were generally moving slowly.

Today, we’re seeing an explosion of utility startups and well-known brands moving into the energy space. It’s not an explosion by UK measures (yet!) but we’re starting to see a similar influx of new, digitally enabled utility concepts, looking to disrupt EDF’s position. On top of that, we see large consumer companies like Casino, Eni and Total make their move into the energy market by rapidly signing up customers in the millions and making aggressive acquisitions (Lampiris, Direct Energie and G2mobility) in the past year.

Going forward

Smart metering will only accelerate this change. The Linky meter will deliver crisp, half-hourly data, which will enable new, digital businesses to sprout and empower consumers to make better and more active choices around energy.

The Linky meter is Europe’s most highly standardised electricity meter and as it is being rolled out aggressively, the increased availability of data is poised to change the landscape of the market even sooner.

Eliq welcomes the change, and will be here to support utilities through that transition, ensuring consumers can receive the maximum value out of their Linky smart meter.