The increasingly liberalised electricity market in Europe has caused the need for standardisation for smart metering. Although several European standards have been established, the EC has called for a more comprehensive set of open standards covering all utility models. As such, in early 2009 it began funding the OPEN Meter Project, a collaborative research project to develop a set of open and public standards for smart multi-metering services, supporting electricity, gas, water and heat metering. The set of standards will be based on existing industry standards where practicable, including those established for BPL and metering for electricity and other utilities. The project is coordinated by the EC to the European Standardisation Organisations CEN, CENELEC and ETSI. 

The project is aimed at removing possible barriers to the wider adoption of smart metering in Europe, by ensuring that products and systems based on the new standards are interoperable and supported by most stakeholders including meter manufacturers (for electricity, water, gas and heat), utilities, research institutes standardisation organisations. European utilities include Iberdrola (Spain), Electicité de France (EdF – France), Endesa and Enel (Italy), and RWE (Germany). 

In June 2009 the project reported on a number of regulatory aspects of smart metering (both on a European and national level), and in the following August it reported on suitable BPL and wireless technologies for smart metering (wireless including GPRS, 3G, WiFi and TETRA). 

The project is expected to run until June 2011.