Aidon is specialized in energy consumption meters and has developed an Automatic Meter Reading (AMR) system for energy and service companies. Aidon’s AMR system is based on open architechture and consist of an electricity energy meter with a data communication bus and the associated system module.
The key competence for Aidon’s concept is their straightforward data transfer technology. Besides the modular meter, communication between the remote reading system and meter points requires no other equipment.
Aidon was established in 2004 and has grown very rapidly, reaching even EUR 20 million turnover in 2008 and operations covering Norway, Sweden and Finland. The key market drivers include the demand for energy efficiency but also the new EU regulation, which requires that utilities install smart meters for all homes and residences in EU by 2023. Smart meters helps both utilities and consumers to use energy more efficiently. For home-owners, it provides with time-based energy usage information as opposed to the monthly bill and gives then a boost to change habits and energy consumption.
For instance in Finland, new law in the spring 2009 requires that utilities install smart meters for 80 percent of Finnish homes by the end of 2010 (amount of installed smart meters right now around 0,8 million). For Aidon, this means that around 2 million meter points in Finland and over 2oo million meter points in Europe will be replaced with new generation meters allowing remote reading. (An article on Tekes site, only in Finnish)
But who pays the bill? In Finland, Ministry of the Economy and Employment has indicated that the total investment for utilities would cost 565 – 940 million euros (a study, only in Finnish). This is paid by home-owners having around 10 euros transfer cost included on electricity bills per year.
The key owners of Aidon are founders and personnel. The rest is distributed between three VC funds Midinvest Management (Finland), Finnish Industry Investment (Finland) and 2VK Invest AS (Norway), which all invested in company five years ago, in 2004.
When it is time for better valuation levels, the open strucure and modularity makes Aidon interesting investment target both for technology providers and the service providers like grid owners and telecommunication companies. The leading technology provider, Landis + Gyr Enerment is actively deploying smart metering technology in Nordic countries with Vattenfall and Fortum. The key owner of the company, Bayard Capital, consolidated Landis+Gyr with another portfolio company Enerment in 2006.
