A joint bid by Greek company Protasis and France’s Sagemcom Energy & Telecom SAS appears to have emerged victorious in a supplementary tender staged by Greek electricity distribution network operator DEDDIE/HEDNO for the installation of an initial lot of 360,000 low-voltage smart meters around the country, as an addition to 7.3 million smart meters planned through the project’s main tender.

The main tender still has a long way to go as technical and financial details included in bids submitted December 7 amount to hundreds of pages and represent a humongous task for officials. But the progress made with the supplementary tender comes as an encouraging sign.

The major tender’s anticipated delay prompted DEDDIE/HEDNO to announce its supplementary tender so that some progress can be made during the major tender’s appraisal period.

The same four bidders have submitted offers to both tenders. Besides the joint bid submitted by Protasis and Sagemcom Energy & Telecom SAS, US corporation Itron’s Spanish subsidiary, fellow US firm Elster Rometrics’ Romanian subsidiary, and Slovenia’s Iskraemeco submitted bids to both procedures.

This initial lot of 360,000 smart meters has been marked out for large-scale consumers as well as public-sector agencies and enterprises all over the country.