US smart meter deployment: AMI statistics by year

Where US deployment stands

The figures below come from EIA Table 10.05, which counts meters by technology type from Form EIA-861. The 2025 data is the final release, published on 7 October 2026.

Source: EIA, Form EIA-861 and EIA-861S. AMI share is AMI meters divided by total meters.

Residential customers make up most of it: 128.8 million residential AMI meters in 2025, 86.9% of residential meters. Commercial customers had 17.5 million AMI meters and industrial customers 0.8 million.

AMI, AMR and standard meters

EIA splits meters into three types:

• AMI (advanced metering infrastructure). In the EIA's definition, AMI "includes meters that measure and record electricity usage at a minimum of hourly intervals and that provide the data to both the utility and the utility customer at least once a day." This is what most people mean by a smart meter.
• AMR (automated meter reading). Meters read remotely, with data going one way, from the customer to the utility.
• Standard meters. Meters with neither, read manually.

What is left to replace

Two trends stand out. AMR meters fell from 29.8 million in 2021 to 16.2 million in 2025, and standard meters fell from 20.9 million to 6.5 million. Together that still leaves about 22.7 million non-AMI meters, about 13% of the total.

AMR meters fell by 13.7 million in four years, faster than standard meters in absolute terms. So a large share of the remaining US work replaces a meter that is already read remotely, not a manual one.

What this means for field teams

Whether a utility's own crews or a contractor do the work, AMI deployment is high-volume meter exchange, with the same needs as anywhere else:

• capture the old meter's serial and final read, and the new meter's serial;
• photos and GPS location as proof of the exchange;
• a list of sites that could not be done (access, damaged meter base, customer refusal) to route back for follow-up;
• confirmation that the new meter is communicating before the job is closed.

PIEBENCH covers smart meter installation and installation verification on an offline Android app, and can push completed jobs to head-end and billing systems through integrations. Plans start at $199/month.

How to read these numbers

• Meters, not customers. Since 2010 EIA counts meters. Before that the count was the number of customers.
• Standard meters are partly missing. EIA started collecting standard meter counts in 2013, and the short form EIA-861S doesn't collect them. Small utilities' standard meters may be undercounted.
• Release cycle. EIA publishes the advanced metering file once a year. The EIA-861 page lists the next release, early 2026 data, for August 2027.

For other countries, see the smart meter rollout tracker.