Lithuanian City Utilizing Iot & Lora To Join The Smart City Movement

Kauno energija, a company that works in Kaunas, the second-largest city in Lithuania plays a great role in the country’s logistics, economic processes, and innovation flows. Kaunas city is located precisely in the center of all Europe as it elaborately comprises Western and East-Central Europe. Kaunas has a pretty small population, estimated at nearly 400,000 but, generally, due to its location is of great importance for all of Europe.

With such a position, Kaunas has a necessity to be converted into a smart city. The city has already made investments in smart technologies that would improve its citizens’ lives and solve network coverage challenges. Currently, Kaunas is working to become a smart city by integrating technology, research, and education into a single entity. In order to make Kaunas a smart city, Lithuania has worked to develop infrastructure and manage strategic issues for long-term development. The introduction of a LoRaWAN® network will also help in the implementation of smart city technologies in the power industry.

In order to simplify the ordering and delivery of LoRaWAN® technology to Kaunas city, Kauno energija turned for help to Dicto Citius, a leading service provider and system integrator in Lithuania,  and ACC Distribution, one of the best TEKTELIC distributors in the Baltic region. ACC Distribution is a renowned partner in the IoT industry, and it plays a huge role in the integration of LoRaWAN® gateways to the Baltics. Thanks to this company, LoRa network solutions are more accessible and easier to deploy.

The Challenge

Kaunas city faces many different issues. For instance, the city serves as a home to a growing number of elderly residents. In addition, the city has a deteriorating infrastructure that creates challenges to the creation of smart buildings. The city is currently experiencing a rapid increase in car numbers. With a growing population and a growing economy, the city must also consider environmental issues. Such worldwide environmental issues as global warming, air pollution, water supply are quite real for Kaunas and they cannot be resolved without proper innovative technologies developed smart cities have. That can be seen as a critical necessity to create a better, more efficient transport system, and promote a better quality of life.

As a separate point, we may outline challenges connected to the heating system. Nearly 90% of residents are served by district heating in the city. Considering problems with an uninterrupted water supply and power consumption, the need to integrate an IoT network can be considered reasonable. Moreover, DH technology provides very good opportunities to keep the air quality on a high level.

Kauno energija implements innovations of scale to the city infrastructure. The company has been operating in Lithuania since 1963 and contributed significantly to improve community services, improved cost savings from the city budget and contribute to the creation of cost-effective smart city buildings. Kauno energija supplies green heat and hot water to 120,000 inhabitants and about 3,500 commercial buildings. It also manages 410 kilometers of the city’s centrally supplied heat network.

Solution

An effective solution to the abovementioned problems became the integration of the IoT network. Kauno energija has recently started to integrate the LoRaWAN® technology to the whole city in order to unify data collection systems and widely deploy the Internet of Things in Kaunas city. Kauno energija reached the decision to integrate the LoRaWAN® solutions quite responsibly. After conducting thorough research, the company found numerous benefits that LoRaWAN® networks can bring to smart infrastructure and city services, in a cost-effective and time-efficient manner.

LoRa technology has a wide range of applications, including remote sensing and analysis of various parameters of heat, hot water, and thermal networks. Such developed networking technologies allow the simplification of smart city applications integration and more optimized use of Internet of Things solutions.

Precisely in the industrial monitoring systems, TEKTELIC LoRaWAN gateways will solve the problem of real-time data monitoring. It will decrease the occurrence of operational errors due to the possibility to take preventive and operational measures. In such a way, the LoRa solutions will lead Kauno energija to lower operating expenses and more optimized energy management.

Kauno energija is also planning on the integration of smart city technology to other municipal utilities of Kaunas City. With the use of LoRa technology, the Kaunas City Municipality will be able to manage cold water supply, improve waste management, fasten the parking space searches, reduce air pollution, and improve the management of street lights.

In order to realize all the ideas and initiatives, Kauno energija has chosen the TEKTELIC KONA Macro IoT Gateway. This gateway is an ideal solution for operators and enterprises that have a necessity to cover large areas with the LoRaWAN® network. KONA Macro IoT Gateway operates at a low cost and has low power consumption, making it perfect for companies contributing to the creation of smart cities. Moreover, the KONA Macro has diverse deployment capabilities such as utility poles, lamp posts, towers, roofs, or wall mounts, which met Kauno energija’s deployment requirements.

Choosing to deploy a LoRaWAN® network was the best option with its long range capabilities, low power consumption and unlicensed spectrum usage, as LoRaWAN® could address all of the Internet of Things coverage challenges the company had and provides for great prospects in the future IoT Projects and innovation.

The company’s coordinators of the smart city program now are planning to help in the implementation of smart technologies in buildings, contribute to the digitalization of the city, and solve such problems as global warming, or continually delayed renovations of apartment buildings. Kauno energija will also supervise the efficiency of buildings using long-range wireless technology. In addition, the company will conduct research for the improvement of the construction process, as well as to develop a digitalization policy in Lithuania. Finally, the Kauno energija is planning to develop a system to measure the pollution levels in different areas of Kaunas.

Conclusion

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a great solution for issues related to energy consumption, poor waste management, high operational costs, and public safety. Kauno energija successfully integrated LoRaWAN® protocol in its operational processes that significantly improved city services. Low power consumption, battery life, and real-time asset tracking give Kauno energija an opportunity to provide the city and its residents with better services and create an effective urban alliance.

Contacts 

To discover more about Kauno energija projects on smart energy use, be sure to visit kaunoenergija.lt

To order a reliable LoRa and LoRaWAN® solution in the Baltic region, reach out to ACC Distribution.

To learn more about Dicto Citius, a leading service provider and system integrator, please visit the official webpage.

In case you a striving to learn more about TEKTELIC’s complete end-to-end IoT solutions for smart cities, don’t hesitate to contact us or visit our solutions page.