Sanjeewa Athuraliya,
Telecommunications Architect, Ergon Energy
Ergon Energy has one of the lowest customer densities of any utility company, resulting in very long distribution lines and making load variation and management a key issue. The company wanted a load control wire IoT solution to enable it to connect beyond substations to individual household power consumers such as hot water.
Ergon Energy’s Sanjeewa Athuraliya, Telecommunications Architect, explains the problem for utility companies and their customers. “Historically when faced with network constraints energy utilities upgraded their networks. However that increases infrastructure costs and places upward pressure on electricity prices. We had to think outside the square on this problem.”
NNNCo delivered an end-to-end scalable solution, deploying a low power wide area network (LPWAN) using the global open standard LoRa® technology and highly cost-effective sensors installed on hot water circuits. Starting as a trial in Townsville, the sensors give Ergon Energy granular control to switch individual loads on and off so that they can be reduced where needed and in times of peak power demand without affecting customers. The end game is to allow Ergon Energy to run its network more effectively, increase the longevity of the network, and save customers money over the long-term.
