Sindcon IoT Technology in Singapore, a provider of LPWAN IoT metering, and Indonesian IoT provider IoT Kreasi are using Semtech’s LoRa technology for battery-powered smart water and electricity meters.

The use of LoRa devices and LoRaWan can streamline smart utilities operations for smart buildings.

For larger buildings with several tenants, manual metering can be a labour-intensive process and is prone to human error, resulting in unfair billing. Sindcon and IoT Kreasi developed battery-powered smart meters using LoRaWan to eliminate the manual energy and water meter reading process entirely.

The smart meters also benefit from LoRaWan connectivity for remote control of the water meters to open and close the water valve as needed.

“When designing our smart meters, reliability and constant connectivity where the key factors,” said Deyu Chen, CEO of Sindcon. “The robustness of LoRaWan helped us to achieve over 90% data success rate. In addition, its low power capabilities extend battery life of up to seven years.”

This deployment of water and electricity meters installed in tall buildings is typical of dense urban environments with over 20,000 habitants per square kilometre showing that LoRaWan can support high density while ensuring a remaining capacity to add other applications in future.

The success of the smart meters has been seen in the Lloyd apartment complex in Indonesia with 27 towers.

“Implementing LoRaWan for the smart meters was a key factor in the overall success of the Lloyd deployment,” said Aldi Kurniawan, CEO of IoT Kreasi in Indonesia. “Due to the improved billing transparency, Lloyd tenant satisfaction increased more than 50% and they are now empowered to monitor their own utilities usage daily with no surprise bill at the end.”

Marc Pégulu, vice president at Semtech, added: “LoRaWan is meeting the needs of the smart building segment. Alongside Semtech’s LoRa devices, the ability to enable efficient and economical use of a building’s resources, while creating a safe and comfortable environment for its tenants, highlight Semtech’s commitment towards creating a smarter planet.”

Sindcon is one of the pioneer companies based in Singapore focusing on one-stop IoT metering from device to IoT platform based on LPWAN technology. Since Sindcon was established in 2015, it started implementing smart LoRaWan gas, water and electricity meters as well as various IoT sensors commercially and providing IoT platform service in various projects across Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia.