Greece: Financing of 150 million euros from the EIB to DEDDIE for the installation of smart meters

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The European Investment Bank (EIB) has signed a contract for the financing of the gradual installation of smart electricity meters with DEDDIE.

DEDIE secures a 15-year loan of 150 million euros, for the installation of 3.12 million smart meters and the necessary supporting infrastructure.

According to the EIB, the project is expected to be co-financed with a loan of 273 million euros from the Recovery and Resilience Mechanism (RMF) in order to cover the estimated total investment cost of 546 million euros.

“Increasing energy investment is key to improving grid reliability, harnessing the potential of solar and wind power in Greece and contributing to Europe’s energy transition,” said Werner Heuer, President of the EIB.

“The green and sustainable future of Europe goes through projects like this. Our homes, workplaces and other buildings are among the main sources of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, in part due to the inefficient use of electricity. Smart meters, such as those installed by DEDDIE, will play an important role in increasing energy efficiency and preventing waste”

“The EIB has always supported the PPC Group. We welcome the investment in one of DEDDIE’s most iconic projects that will rapidly transform and modernize the Greek energy market, upgrading the electricity distribution network, paving the way for a successful energy transition. Smart meters and smart grids are essential to achieving all our energy goals. In the face of climate change, we need a more reliable network, a smarter network, now more than ever,” said Anastasios Manos, CEO of DEDDIE.

What are smart meters?

The systems are expected to provide real-time information to end customers, facilitate energy savings and support demand response. In addition, they will help address issues that slow down the achievement of European and national long-term energy and climate goals.

The benefits of smart meters for the consumer, according to the relevant information from DEDDIE, include:

-Transparency in consumption measurement.

-The possibility of saving by changing supplier even during the day and taking advantage of different tariffs depending on the period of use.

– Possibility to participate in the market to small producers with storage and sale of energy and to consumers with a fee for transferring consumption outside of peak periods.

Benefits are also expected for suppliers (improvement of cash flows, immediate cut-off in the cases provided for such as overdue debts, frequent measurement and issuing of bills with shorter payment times, more flexible offer packages, multi-zone pricing) and for the network: the counting, the disconnections and reconnections will be done remotely in a much shorter time, management and resolution of faults remotely and in a much shorter time, further reduction of power thefts, possibility to collect data from e.g. natural gas or water meters, etc.

Mitsotakis meeting with the president of the EIB

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis met at Megaros Maximos with the president of the European Investment Bank, Werner Heuer.

During the meeting, the possibilities of further expanding Greece’s important, long-term cooperation with the EIB, the positive course of the Greek economy and its prospects, as well as the need to deal with the consequences of the climate crisis, both at the level of prevention and customization level.

This was followed by a ceremony of signing a financing agreement regarding the smart meters project by EIB vice-president Kyriakos Kakouris and DEDDIE managing director Anastasios Manos.

“I am glad to welcome you again to Athens. Much has been accomplished since your last visit. As you know, we have finally regained investment grade, which has made us all very happy. I believe it is an important milestone,” said the Prime Minister welcoming Werner Heuer at the Maximos Palace.

“I would like to thank you again for the excellent level of cooperation between Greece and the Bank. I think the agreement we’re signing today to fund smart meters is a very good indication of where we want to go in the future in terms of our climate change policies and ensuring that electricity systems are as efficient as possible. Households will have much better control over their bills and be able to save money, that’s what the smart meter is all about. They will have ownership of the consumption they will make, in a much more transparent way,” said Kyriakos Mitsotakis.

“We had a very productive discussion with Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis. We discussed, among other things, last summer’s devastating floods and fires. These tragedies are a grim reminder of the dangers of climate change. They are called natural disasters, they are unnatural disasters, extreme phenomena that are the result of our failure at the global level to protect our planet, over a long period of time,” said Werner Heuer after the signing ceremony.

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“Perhaps the most important area of ​​all in mitigating the effects of climate change is energy networks. Upgrading electricity networks is absolutely necessary to enable the installation of new and more renewable energy sources, absolutely necessary to increase efficiency, absolutely necessary and vital to lower energy bills for our citizens. The contract we signed today with the Greek distribution network operator highlights the EIB’s focus in this area. Smarter grids are a prerequisite for the decarbonisation of our energy supply,” noted the president of the European investment bank.

Modernization of energy transmission infrastructure with a green and digital sign

The project concerns the supply and installation of a total of 7.3 million smart meters to serve all low voltage consumers. The new meters, of which 5.3 million will be single-phase and the rest will be three-phase, will be connected to an upgraded high-capacity telemetering centre.

It is of key importance for the digital transformation of the network and for the achievement of the national objectives for the protection of the environment, which have been set in the framework of the European Union. It is expected to bring many and substantial benefits to consumers, as smart meters will allow them, among other things, to monitor energy use in real time, save resources, better plan their activities, participate in economically beneficial market programs and to have accurate pricing of their consumption.

DEDDIE and energy market participants will also have significant operational benefits, which is indirectly in the interest of society as a whole, given that the new infrastructure will facilitate the detection of technical losses and power theft, while at the same time creating a much simpler service delivery ecosystem .

The completion of the investment is planned for 2030, but as of the end of this year, DEDDIE will be able to telemeter approximately 40% of the energy consumed, a percentage that is estimated to exceed 55% by the end of 2024.

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The total project budget is €1.2 billion, of which €150 million will be covered by European Investment Bank resources, supporting the first phase of the replacement of old cash.