Wirepas is bringing its RF mesh to Europe’s smart grids after success in India.

The Finland-based company proved resilience at scale with ten million connected smart meters in India. It is now bringing its NR+ standardised RF mesh to Europe’s grids.

As an entirely European technology, it is said to provide the reliable, affordable and secure foundation Europe needs to maintain a resilient energy supply during its energy transition.

“Reliability at scale isn’t theory for us, it’s a responsibility we take seriously,” said Teppo Hemiä, CEO of Wirepas (wirepas.com). “India is the toughest testbed imaginable for IoT. It is dense, diverse and dynamic. If your radio network performs there, it performs anywhere. That’s why our experience in India is the strongest proof point for Europe’s energy future. Europe, on the other hand, sets the highest benchmark for compliance and trust. Meeting Europe’s stringent standards for connectivity, interoperability and data protection underlines the maturity and robustness of our technology.”

Wirepas’ mesh technology (wirepas.com/wirepas-mesh/) connects some of the largest smart metering networks on the planet, including deployments with more than a million smart electricity meters in a single network. These implementations deliver 99.99% reliability across vast geographies from dense urban high-rises to remote rural villages, including extreme environmental conditions.

New meters efficiently join every few seconds, continuously expanding the reach and resilience of the Wirepas networks, and reducing the workforce effort massively, which is advantageous given the shortfall of qualified engineers in this field.

Unlike centralised cellular or PLC systems, every meter in a Wirepas RF mesh acts as both transmitter and receiver, creating a self-healing, decentralised network that continues to operate even when individual connections fail. The result is uninterrupted, large-scale data flow without costly infrastructure or single points of failure.

Europe is undergoing a transformation in its energy systems, driven by electrification. By 2029, the continent is expected to reach 80% smart meter coverage (285 million devices), with the European Commission projecting €580bn in grid investments by 2030, €170bn of that in digitalisation.

Yet many of Europe’s existing networks still rely on legacy PLC or cellular communications, technologies not designed for today’s scale, reliability and affordability requirements.

As utilities prepare to integrate millions more connected devices, resilient, self-healing RF mesh networks are emerging as the critical missing layer.

“As Europe accelerates electrification and decentralisation in parallel, one essential layer has often been underestimated: the choice of connectivity determines if digitalised grid can be sustained with less investment in copper,” said Hemiä. “The energy transition depends on data as much as on electrons. Every meter and sensor must communicate seamlessly to balance demand, optimise supply and ensure grid stability, while at the same time delivering non-repudiable data as the basis for small-ticket financial transactions between asset owners, consumers and system operators. Decentralised energy systems require decentralised communication, and that’s exactly what NR+ and Wirepas deliver.”

Wirepas’ technology is built on the NR+ global standard (wirepas.com/nr-5g-standard/), created in Europe, for massive IoT that uses licence-exempt spectrum instead of costly mobile licences. This architecture offers resilience by design for decentralised, self-healing connectivity.

It is affordability at scale with independence from proprietary networks and high patent fees. Its low-power, flexible infrastructure supports data-driven energy optimisation without network sunsets. This means the network is available as long as needed, and not just as long as operators keep the spectrum in place.