In August, Croatia’s state-owned power utility, HEP, launched a public procurement for smart meters, aiming to enhance remote electricity consumption readings with an investment of 87 million euros, funded by the National Recovery and Resilience Plan. The company plans to equip all metering points in the country with these advanced meters by the end of the decade.
HEP-ODS, the electricity distribution system operator, manages 21 distribution areas and approximately 2.48 million metering points within the distribution network. The tender is structured into four groups based on distribution areas, allowing a single economic entity to bid for all groups. The procurement includes single-phase and three-phase advanced meters for households and businesses, G3-PLC data concentrators to facilitate communication between the meters and the remote management system, and multifunction meters for transformer stations.
The budget allocation for these areas is as follows:
- Zagreb, Zabok, Varaždin, Čakovec, Koprivnica, Bjelovar, Križ, Karlovac and Sisak: 40.5 million euros.
- Pula, Rijeka and Gospić: 13.6 million euros.
- Split, Zadar, Šibenik and Dubrovnik: 23.7 million euros.
- Osijek, Vinkovci, Slavonski Brod, Virovitica and Požega: 8.6 million euros.
HEP-ODS expects this modernization to reduce operational costs, enable billing based on actual consumption, and improve the management of electricity consumption. According to the ten-year Distribution Network Development Plan (2023-2032), about 18% of metering points for business customers and 12.4% of household metering points were already equipped with smart meters at the time the plan was developed.
However, previous smart meter procurements by HEP have faced controversies and complaints, leading to an investigation by the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF).
