Kerlink is demonstrating that smart city networks can deliver the same benefits for small towns that they do for metropolitan areas using LoRaWan wireless technology in Saint-Grégoire, France.

The town has 9700 residents in a 17km² area. It has installed a customised IoT network aimed at reducing building energy consumption by 20 per cent, cutting CO₂ emissions and making use of city services more convenient.

Deployed with French company Kerlink’s integrator partner, Sensing Vision, the network combines LoRaWan connectivity with Kerlink’s indoor and outdoor Wirnet LoRaWan gateways, and its Wanesy management centre, wifi hotspots and Saint-Grégoire’s existing optical fibre network.

“Studies report that public buildings waste a lot of electricity use without systems that monitor and manage room usage, lighting and temperature,” said Benjamin Maury, smart city director at Kerlink. “Kerlink’s LoRaWans can be configured to meet the precise building-efficiency goals of public officials in any size of municipality, including simple management of network options. Add to that the efficient use of parking spaces and monitoring of refuse collection, and you have a flexible solution that reduces costs, saves energy and improves quality of life for city residents.”

Industrial-grade Wirnet LoRaWan gateways, including Wirnet iStation outdoor gateways and a Wirnet iFemtoCell indoor gateway, receive and route data from 68 energy-use sensors, 150 parking-spot sensors and two Covid-19 refrigerator-sensor sites across the town through the Wanesy management centre to Sensing Vision”s Energy Suite. City staff continuously monitor the data with Sensing Vision’s dashboard and get notified by email and SMS for critical alerts.

“As an integrator of communication networks that include equipment and software from a variety of vendors, Sensing Vision confidently recommends and works with Kerlink’s technology,” said Benoit Vagneur, president of Sensing Vision. “Our collaborations in smart-city projects have helped municipal officials meet their goals for energy conservation and lower emissions, as well as for making essential services more efficient.”

Between October 2020 and January 2021, the town achieved a 43 per cent reduction in electricity consumption, saving €12,000.

This reduction was achieved by transforming real-time data into valuable information, and guiding town staff to adjust systems to match the requested service level, associated with the real occupancy of public buildings. Real-time alerts by email and SMS allow the staff to react without delay to leakages, wrong parameters and system dysfunctions.

Kerlink provides connectivity for designing, launching, and operating public and private IoT networks. Its portfolio includes industrial-grade network equipment, network core, operations and management software, value-added applications and professional services, backed by R&D capabilities.

More than 120,000 Kerlink installations have been rolled out with more than 330 clients in 69 countries. Based in France, with subsidiaries in the USA, Singapore, India and Japan, Kerlink is a co-founder and board member of the LoRa Alliance.

Sensing Vision is a private company near Rennes, France. It offers private IoT networks, shared or on-premise sovereign hosting, and a suite of applications for building, parking, air quality and waste monitoring.