Serbia has installed more than 900,000 smart electricity meters, taking the digital share of the country’s metering base to roughly one quarter as state distribution operator Elektrodistribucija Srbije (EDS) prepares another 400,000-meter rollout backed by European financing.
EDS said investment in smart-metering infrastructure had reached about €200 million, marking one of the largest digitalisation programmes undertaken in Serbia’s electricity distribution network.
The initial large-scale rollout was supported by around €110 million in European Union grants, followed by financing involving the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
EDS is now preparing a further phase covering about 400,000 meters, with support from the European Investment Bank.
The additional phase is still under preparation and should not be treated as completed deployment.
EDS also plans to introduce a customer portal this autumn that would allow households and businesses to monitor electricity consumption more closely.
The programme is becoming increasingly relevant as Serbia adds rooftop solar, battery storage and other distributed resources, while industrial exporters face growing requirements to document where, when and how electricity used in production was measured.
Digitalisation moves beyond pilot stage
Serbia has spent years modernising a distribution system characterised by ageing infrastructure, relatively high losses and limited real-time information about electricity flows.
Passing 900,000 installations indicates that smart metering is moving from selected projects toward system-scale deployment.
Digital meters enable remote reading and provide more granular consumption and production data than conventional devices.
For EDS, that can improve billing accuracy, help identify abnormal consumption and support more precise monitoring of losses and network conditions.
Their value is also increasing as households and companies install rooftop solar.
A consumer with solar panels can alternate between drawing electricity from the grid and injecting surplus production, making accurate two-way measurement increasingly important.
CBAM gives industrial metering a new role — and a clear limit
For Serbian manufacturers exporting goods covered by the European Union’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, more granular electricity data can strengthen the evidence supporting energy and emissions calculations.
But smart-meter readings have an important limitation.
They can show how much electricity was consumed, exported or imported through a defined metering point and, depending on the system, when those flows occurred.
They do not by themselves prove that electricity came from a particular renewable installation.
Nor does a smart meter establish that a claimed megawatt-hour satisfies the contractual, physical-flow, allocation and verification requirements needed for a specific CBAM electricity claim.
For an industrial buyer claiming electricity from a named renewable source, a verifier would need to reconcile the meter data with a broader evidence chain.
That can include the electricity supply or power-purchase contract, identification of the generating installation, production-meter records, supplier invoices, grid and scheduling data where relevant, allocation records and evidence that the same electricity volume has not been claimed elsewhere.
Certificates such as guarantees of origin can support that chain but do not replace the underlying physical and contractual evidence where the applicable CBAM methodology requires it.
The distinction is important.
A factory may have a modern smart meter capable of showing hourly consumption while still being unable to demonstrate that those particular consumption volumes correspond to electricity from the renewable plant identified in its commercial claim.
Smart metering therefore strengthens MRV — measurement, reporting and verification — infrastructure, but it is only one layer of a CBAM evidence package.
Meter hierarchy becomes important for exporters
The issue becomes more complex at industrial sites with several meters.
A factory may have a utility revenue meter at the grid connection, internal production-line meters, rooftop solar meters, battery meters and additional meters covering individual buildings or processes.
For verification purposes, those readings must form a controlled hierarchy.
The primary meter needs to be identified.
Internal meters need to reconcile with the boundary meter.
Any difference caused by transformers, auxiliary consumption, on-site generation or storage needs to be understood and documented.
That is particularly important where a company wants to allocate electricity consumption to individual CBAM-covered products.
A smart meter can provide highly detailed data, but detailed data are not automatically reliable evidence if the metering boundary, calibration status, ownership and allocation methodology are unclear.
For exporters, the practical benefit of Serbia’s metering modernisation will therefore depend partly on whether EDS data can be incorporated into controlled corporate MRV systems.
Distribution grid becomes part of the renewable bottleneck
Serbia’s renewable-energy expansion is increasingly constrained not only by generation capacity but by the ability of networks to absorb new projects.
Transmission operator EMS has tightened connection requirements for large renewable and storage developments as applications have increased.
EDS faces a similar challenge at distribution level across much larger numbers of smaller installations.
Industrial companies, commercial buildings and households are adding distributed generation while electricity demand is becoming more complex through electrification, cooling and electric vehicles.
Smart meters are only one element of that investment cycle.
Substations, transformers, automation systems, communications infrastructure and network-control platforms will also require upgrading if distributed generation continues to expand.
Loss reduction remains an economic test
One of the programme’s more immediate tests will be whether digitalisation reduces distribution losses.
Serbia has historically recorded relatively high technical and commercial losses compared with more modern European distribution systems.
Smart meters cannot eliminate losses caused by ageing lines and transformers, but detailed consumption data can make discrepancies easier to identify and allow EDS to target inspections and network investment more precisely.
The economic value of the programme will therefore depend less on the number of meters installed than on how effectively their data are incorporated into billing, network operation and loss-control systems.
Industry needs data that can survive verification
For industrial users, the transition is increasingly from energy monitoring toward audit-ready energy data.
Manufacturers exposed to CBAM need more than monthly electricity bills if they intend to support detailed claims about electricity use or the emissions associated with production.
They need records that can be traced from the relevant product and reporting period back through the installation’s energy balance to the underlying measurement points.
Smart meters can improve that traceability.
They can help establish consumption volumes, timing and reconciliation between different sections of an installation.
But they cannot close gaps elsewhere in the evidence chain.
A missing contract cannot be replaced by meter data.
A renewable certificate cannot establish physical consumption by itself.
A supplier declaration cannot substitute for controlled allocation.
And a factory meter cannot prove the output of a remote generating plant unless the wider evidence chain connects the two.
For Serbian exporters, that distinction may become increasingly important as EU verifiers begin testing electricity claims rather than simply accepting commercial descriptions such as “green electricity”.
European institutions finance the transition
The programme also shows how Serbia’s distribution-network modernisation is increasingly tied to European institutions.
The first large rollout relied heavily on EU grants, while later stages have involved the EBRD and preparations for EIB support.
That reduces the immediate financing burden on EDS while connecting the programme to wider European energy-transition investment.
Distribution infrastructure is becoming one of the largest investment requirements across European electricity markets as renewable generation becomes more decentralised.
For Serbia, the same digital infrastructure can also support the increasingly demanding measurement requirements facing EU-oriented industry.
Customer portal could make data more accessible
EDS’s planned customer portal could make the digitalisation programme more tangible for households and businesses.
For industrial customers, however, the key issue will be whether data can be retrieved at sufficient granularity and in formats suitable for internal energy management and independent verification.
A visual dashboard is useful for operational control.
A verifier requires something more: controlled, reproducible data that can be reconciled against invoices, contracts and other primary records.
That distinction will determine how valuable distribution-system data ultimately become for CBAM-related MRV.
Scale remains the challenge
Despite passing 900,000 meters, most Serbian electricity customers have not yet been converted.
The next 400,000-unit phase would increase coverage materially but still leave a significant conventional-meter base.
Serbia has previously indicated an ambition to replace around 80% of meters by the end of the decade.
Meeting that target will require continued procurement and financing, as well as integration of the devices into EDS’s wider IT and network-management systems.
Cybersecurity, data integrity and access controls will become increasingly important as metering information begins to support not only billing but industrial energy management and regulatory reporting.
The larger test is therefore whether EDS can convert its roughly €200 million smart-meter investment into a trusted digital measurement layer for the electricity system.
For CBAM-exposed Serbian industry, that would be valuable — but it should not be confused with a complete compliance solution.
A smart meter can verify the MWh measured at a defined point. It cannot, on its own, verify where that MWh came from, who had the right to claim it, whether it was correctly allocated or whether the electricity claim satisfies CBAM requirements.
Those questions require the rest of the evidence chain.
