The Long View: What Enlit Revealed about the Future of Utility Networks

Walking the floor at Enlit in Bilbao this November, one couldn’t help but consider how the decisions made today about network infrastructure will shape how communities access energy and water for the foreseeable future. The LoRa Alliance had a significant presence at the event, with six members in its pavilion and more than 25 others throughout the venue. Companies like Janz, Kerlink, MultiTech, Semtech, TEKTELIC, and Zenner demonstrated utility solutions while countless conversations revealed both the opportunities and complexities utilities face as they modernize networks.

The Metering Story Emerges

The smart metering market has long been at the forefront of IoT, representing some of the earliest deployments–and increasingly some of the largest. A key takeaway from the event is that metering, led by water metering, followed by gas and electric, has the highest LoRaWAN deployment volumes. The numbers tell part of the story:

• LoRa Alliance board member ZENNER has more than 9 million meters and submeters installed and operational
• Veolia, also on the alliance’s board, has 3.3 million water meters online in France using Orange’s nationwide network
• Arad has built a nationwide network in Israel, serving 1 million water meters
• There are 650 thousand water meters deployed in Spain, half of which are from Arson metering, now part of Netmore, another board member
• Netmore itself is undertaking a 1.1 million-water-meter project in the UK

Based on these deployments and numerous others, we estimate that approximately 25% of deployed LoRaWAN end-devices are smart meters. More tellingly, recent requests for proposal increasingly specify LoRaWAN technology, often in combination with Wireless M-Bus (wM-Bus) for walk-by and drive-by reading capabilities.

A Fragmented Connectivity Landscape

The range of metering technologies on the exhibition floor was hard to miss. LoRaWAN, NB-IoT, wM-Bus, Wi-SUN, and several proprietary technologies, including mesh networks, were all represented.   End-customer preferences drive choice, resulting in the current market fragmentation.

One dynamic worth noting: NB-IoT pricing for metering use cases appears to be declining, even in China, its historic stronghold, which accounts for 90% of its deployments and offers subsidized pricing. Ultimately, subsidized pricing is not a sustainable, future-proof solution.

The ultimate choice needs to be standards-based, extensible, and sustainable. The LoRa Alliance anticipates that consolidation will begin to shift the technology landscape, but it will require utilities to better educate themselves on the benefits of standards-based solutions.

What Standards-Based Solutions Offer

When utilities look beyond immediate deployment costs to the total lifetime value of their infrastructure investments, certain advantages of standards-based approaches become apparent.

LoRaWAN’s ability to serve multiple applications — smart cities, building management, industrial monitoring, agriculture, and metering—creates opportunities for utilities to maximize their return on infrastructure investment. This is similar the Internet principle, whereby one infrastructure supports countless applications. 

For metering specifically, LoRaWAN offers several advanced features that address practical deployment challenges: relay capabilities for extending coverage, firmware updates over-the-air (FUOTA), and DLMS and OMS integrations. Additionally, the LoRa Alliance is working to provide native walk/drive-by readings with LoRaWAN. These features make it uniquely suited to the metering environment, where data must be transmitted through walls, concrete, and underground, support future software updates in the field, and integrate with well-established metering infrastructure.

The network flexibility also warrants consideration. LoRaWAN supports public, private, and community networks, as well as both terrestrial and satellite connectivity, and allows applications to use a mix of these networks, which are easily stitched together using a very lightweight roaming setup. Veolia demonstrates how it leverages both Orange’s public networks and its own private LoRaWAN network to optimize coverage. In another example, ETA2U uses a hybrid approach that combines its own private network with a community network. Roaming also works between terrestrial and satellite networks, for example, to connect rural meters to satellite rather than build terrestrial networks.

Growth and Momentum

LoRa Alliance membership growth mirrors the increasing adoption of LoRaWAN. With 57 new members added this year alone, membership has surpassed 360 companies. Substantial booth traffic and inquiries about joining the alliance point to continued, accelerated growth to address the RFP/RFQ-driven demand.

However, membership and deployment numbers may also signal that a consolidation process may be beginning. As utilities learn more about the trade-offs between proprietary solutions and standards-based approaches, and between subsidized pricing and long-term sustainability, we expect the technology landscape to evolve.

The Decisions Ahead

The most important takeaway from Enlit isn’t about a single technology’s market position, but instead the nature of the decisions that utilities must make. Long-term infrastructure investments will have implications that extend beyond a typical product cycle. Enlit offered utilities a chance to see the whole landscape, ask questions, and weigh the trade-offs between technologies. With ambitious sustainability goals and a greater need for transparency and data access, utility companies will continue to attend Enlit to deepen their understanding of available solutions.

We look forward to continuing these conversations in the years ahead.