Two companies partner to offer complete remote metering and smart street lighting solutions across India

SenRa, an India low-power wide-area network (LPWAN) provider for long range-based (LoRa-based) Internet of Things (IoT) applications, and Nordic Automation Systems (NAS), an end- to-end LoRaWAN solution provider, have partnered to offer complete remote metering and smart street lighting solutions across India.

There has been a tremendous increase in smart metering market in the coming years. Asia-Pacific is estimated to be the fastest growing market for smart meters. The main factors of growth are largely driven by energy conservation, government policies, need for more accurate billing as well as increasing smart grid deployments globally.

For SenRa, the partnership with Nordic Automation Systems opens up possibilities to provide smart metering solutions with already existing and tested solid products, which ensures faster roll out to the Indian market.

Ali Hosseini, the CEO of SenRa, commented, “We are very happy to work with NAS and have experienced first-hand the finesse NAS brings into the product design and execution. The collaboration with NAS allows SenRa the ability to bring in LoRa device offerings to Indian market as well as offer NAS access to the fastest growing IoT Market in the world.”

Nordic Automation Systems, the leading end-to-end LoRaWAN solution provider, has been focusing on the development and distribution of their own designed and manufactured LoRaWAN products for the last couple of years. As the problem of water scarcity is growing in India, Nordic Automation Systems is assured that the developed metering products bring first-hand awareness for people in India about water usage. This in turn will bring about a behavioural change in consumers to cut down their consumption.

Viljo Veesaar, the CEO of Nordic Automation Systems, said, “We see extensive opportunities in the Asia-Pacific region and we believe having strong local service provider such as SenRa as a partner in India is a turning point for us.”

SenRa, who plans to deploy LPWAN solutions across India, is taking their focus on smart water metering to ensure more precise and effective water management for the consumers. The mentioned Indian LPWAN solution provider has successfully finished tests with ultrasonic water meters from NAS Metromatic product range.

“We are viewing a high growth potential in smart water metering and the scope encompasses retrofit, volumetric, and ultrasonic meters. We would like to progress on all these product lines as the extent of opportunity in all three is huge and needs to be addressed as a combined offering,” added Ali Hosseini.

Beside remote water management, India is planning to replace the majority of conventional street lights with LED lights across the country in the near future. Integrating smart luminaire controllers into street lights increases the energy efficiency percentage even further.

"The primary idea is to provide better operations, management, and fault correction control at the individual light level and the secondary benefits are to provide power consumption control and power consumption savings. By collaborating with the government and city bodies, there will be a clear message to all citizens that the government is providing identifiable changes in the cities to improve the quality and offerings of utilities for everyone,” said Ali Hosseini.

LPWAN is a broad term covering several implementations and protocols, both open-source and proprietary. While other wireless communication technologies available like Bluetooth and BLE (and to some extent WiFi and ZigBee) are not suited for long-range performance, LPWAN provides the longest range with a low data rates. The technology used in a LoRaWAN network is designed to connect low-cost, battery-operated sensors over long distances in harsh environments that were previously too challenging or cost-prohibitive to connect. With its unique penetration capability, a LoRaWAN gateway deployed on a building or tower can connect to sensors more than 10 miles away or to water meters deployed underground or in basements.