All four final-round qualifiers in a tender being staged by Greek electricity distribution network operator DEDDIE/HEDNO to offer a lucrative contract for the installation of 7.3 million smart meters throughout the country have submitted bids, indicating competition will be intense.

Greek company Protasis, partnering with France’s Sagemcom Energy & Telecom SAS; US corporation Itron’s Spanish subsidiary; fellow US firm Elster Rometrics’ Romanian subsidiary; and Slovenia’s Iskraemeco submitted technical and financial bids by a December 7 deadline that had been set by the operator.

The plan to install smart meters throughout the country, a project budgeted at 1.2 billion euros, ranks as one of Greece’s biggest projects of recent times.

The next stage of the tender will entail establishing an assessment committee that will examine the bids, their letters of guarantee, along with all technical and financial details. This evaluation process will require at least one month to be completed as the overall content amounts to several hundred pages.

The operator has also moved ahead with a supplementary tender to offer an additional contract for swifter installation of a smaller number of low-voltage smart meters, approximately 360,000 in total. The country’s authorities are seeking to have an initial batch of smart meters installed as soon as possible.

The four final-round qualifiers have been set a December 14 deadline for bids concerning this supplementary tender.

Besides offering multiple benefits for consumers, such as dynamic electricity tariffs, transparency and savings, smart meters will also offer the operator a digital map instantly locating technical faults and electricity-theft points.