**4.4 Netherlands**

In 2009, due to privacy concerns, the mandatory rollout was not accepted by the Dutch Senate, so a voluntary rollout of 7 million consumers started. During 2012, the installation of smart meters was performed on a small scale and the company Oxxio (former Eneco Energie) provided over 200,000 smart meters using GPRS as the communication technology [18]. Considering that almost 100% of the households accepted the smart meter (with almost 100% standard readings), it would be expected a benefit of approximately 770 million euros, which is equivalent to 50 € per metering point according to the positive results of the CBA discussed by Bouw et al. [19]. In 2014, the Netherlands decided to implement a strategy for the smart meter gas rollout. In 2015, the rollout of smart meters in the Netherlands reached approximately 1.5 million domestic small meters installed. The target of the Dutch grid operator is to have at least 80% of all Dutch households connected to the network by a smart meter by the end of 2021.
