Swedish infrastructure provider Eltel’s smart grids business has signed a contract with electricity distributor Vattenfall Eldistribution to install 664,000 of its latest smart electricity meters across the country.

The contract is worth about €51m.

This contract is an extension of a previous agreement signed in February 2020, where Vattenfall Eldistribution decided to use the option to order remaining phases of smart electricity meter installations.

As a result, throughout the project, Eltel will be installing a total of approximately 900,000 smart electricity meters and technology for about 40,000 secondary substations metering in Vattenfall’s distribution network across Sweden.

The project started early in 2020 and is expected to be mostly completed by the end of 2024.

The meters themselves come from Chinese company Ningbo Sanxing Smart Electric. This week, after security fears were raised, Vattenfall Eldistribution issued a statement.

“The procurement process in 2019 included strict security criteria and review of current bidders and was carried out together with external experts and authorities,” said the statement. “In that process, among other things, are checked if there are sanctions directed at the persons involved, if they are classified as politically vulnerable persons, have had extensive negative media coverage, are affected by other security risks or other reasons which mean that a deal could not be carried out.”

In some cases, said the statement, depending on the country of origin, there are reasons to make extra in-depth checks and audits, which also happened in this case.

“The technology that is delivered is also carefully reviewed, not least when it comes to IT security and data protection,” it said. “After the checks that were done before the deal, we felt safe with the suppliers that qualified and that we chose. No new information has come to light during the follow-up checks that we carry out continuously, where we ensure that, regardless of ownership, they follow Vattenfall’s very strict code of conduct in terms of rules and policies.”

Eltel is a service provider for critical infrastructure that enables renewable energy and high-performing communication networks. It designs, plans, builds and secures the operation of networks for a more sustainable and connected world.

The company has about 5000 employees and in 2022 the annual sales totalled €823.6m. Its head office is in Sweden and Eltel’s shares have been listed on Nasdaq Stockholm since 2015.