Issue link: https://read.uberflip.com/i/1423196
WHY UTILITIES ARE CHOOSING SMART LoRaWAN ® CONNECTIVITY www.lora-alliance.org expected to contribute to 15.5% and 4.5% respectively of the market value in the same period. Source: IoT Analytics In terms of volume, considering all wireless and wired technologies, licensed and unlicensed, IoT Analytics reports that the smart electricity market has the lion's share with a volume of 151 million new units to be shipped in 2024. Water meter shipments were over 16 million in 2018 and are expected to grow at a CAGR of 10 to reach just under 29 million in 2024 Similarly, Gas meter shipments were over 14 million in 2018 and are expected to grow 8 per year to reach 23 million by 2024. Source: IoT Analytics LPWAN HAS A GENUINE ADVANTAGE IN MINIMIZING THE BOOMING COST OF METERING DATA This illustrates that global smart metering creates an immense volume of data. It is clear that management of these data will be complex and involve enormous data management and analytics capabilities. None of this will be free. Cloud computing resources and the network capacity to link meters to management systems will come at a significant cost, so utilities need to carefully balance the value generated with the expenses incurred. For many, more intelligent meters – genuinely smart meters – will be needed that can understand useful data and send only that for processing. This adds cost to the device, but removes it from the computing cost and also limits the volume of data that needs to be communicated and therefore can also reduce network costs. New trends in water and gas are demanding more frequent data, such as an hourly or every-10-minute consumption index, with devices maintaining long battery lives. With the use of beaconing for synchronization or timestamping on gateways for every message received by a network, the new system can better recognize some consumption patterns and help detect possible leaks or abnormal situations in water and gas networks, creating a better operational efficiency for utilities. Demand for firmware updates over the air (FOTA) 6 is also now supported with recommendations available. LoRaWAN can handle all these new requirements and do so cost effectively for the long term. EXPANDING LoRaWAN THROUGH STANDARDIZATION In its quest to promote and drive the success of the LoRaWAN protocol as the leading open global standard for secure, carrier-grade IoT LPWAN connectivity for utilities, the LoRa Alliance has forged strategic partnerships with organizations that share a mutual benefit in standardizing this technology. Driving a Common Standard with DLMS User Association DLMS (Device Language Message Specification) is a ISO/IEC-recognized standard for smart electricity metering. DLMS is specified by the DLMS User Association which is an international and non-profit organization driving utilities and meter manufacturers to develop and support a common standard for data exchanges with a long history for smart metering. In 2019, the LoRa Alliance and the DLMS User Association announced an active liaison to combine the benefits of IoT applications with a vast ecosystem of wireless sensors and the interoperability provided by an international standard recognized by utilities (read the joint whitepaper 7 ) In June 2020, they presented together in a webinar how to use DLMS over LoRaWAN 8 with a case study of smart electricity metering. In October 2020, the DLMS User Association officially released the new DLMS profile over LoRaWAN, making DLMS the first Internet-based application protocol standard to be supported over LoRaWAN.