Our achievement has been recognised! ZENNER wins Platinum Award in the Smart City/Smart Country category

GeneralNews

In September 2023, ZENNER International GmbH & Co. KG was awarded the eGovernment Readers’ Choice Award in the Smart City / Smart Country category. With more than 350 successful digitalisation projects, ZENNER has been a pioneer in this field for several years now and is continuously working on new solutions.

A smart city is a complex system that goes far beyond the commonly known applications like smart parking or smart street lighting. Rather, it is an intelligent network of an array of digital solutions from different sectors, such as the building sector, electromobility or the field of smart grids. If you want to bring entire neighbourhoods, cities or regions together in one digital ecosystem, you have to think outside the box right from the planning stage. Technology service providers and other partners need to be all-rounders, well-versed in different disciplines, and, above all, they have to think about creating a sustainable, climate-neutral future, starting from today.

ZENNER positioned itself accordingly from an early stage and now offers cross-sector solutions and technology, infrastructure, data services and field-tested applications from a single source.

ZENNER can already look back on more than 350 successful digitalisation projects – in smart metering and submetering, the building sector, electromobility and for smart grids. To this end, ZENNER has relied on the Internet of Things (abbreviated IoT) and the international radio standard LoRaWAN^® from the very beginning, which is now used by hundreds of municipal utilities, energy providers and cities and municipalities.

As a network operator, ZENNER now offers access to one of the largest private LoRaWAN^® networks in Europe, which is already available for the realisation of smart projects in more than 15 countries.

“Nowadays, a total of around seven million measuring instruments and sensors are continuously sending data via our LoRaWAN^® network,” explains René Claussen, Head of the IoT and Digital Solutions Business Unit at ZENNER International GmbH & Co KG.

“These include water meters, heat meters and a wide variety of sensors for applications in smart buildings or smart cities. By digitally transferring data, providers or municipalities are able to optimise numerous processes, save costs and make a significant contribution to protecting the environment and climate.”

When developing digital solutions, ZENNER is guided by the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations (SDGs), which also play an important role in the public sector. The current circumstances surrounding energy and sustainability make it necessary to sharpen the focus on climate neutrality and energy efficiency.

Buildings in Germany are to become climate-neutral by 2045. To achieve this, around 100 million tonnes of CO₂ and other emissions must be saved when it comes to heating alone, and this goal will not be achieved without digitalisation. ZENNER has already developed fitting solutions in this regard. BuildingLink, the new app for controlling smart radiator thermostats via LoRaWAN^®, is a clear example of how buildings’ environmental footprint can be improved to a quantifiable extent. The heating energy consumed in a building is optimised and the positive effects can be seen immediately – with less heating energy being consumed. According to a study by the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), it is possible to save 30 percent or more when heating in this way.

“Innovative solutions like BuildingLink underline our ambition to be a leader in all things smart city. And we are all the more pleased that this has now been honoured with the Readers’ Choice Award,” says Claussen.

Background

The Readers’ Choice Award is an annual award presented in several categories by the magazine “eGovernment”, which is published monthly by Vogel IT-Medien GmbH. The magazine covers topics related to digitisation in the public sector and is read by around 33,000 readers (according to the publisher).

Event – Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona

At the Smart City Expo World Congress 2023 in Barcelona from November 7-9, ZENNER and Brunata A/S will jointly present the latest Smart City and Smart Building use cases as well as references under the motto “Building our future together” at the joint LoRa Alliance® booth in Hal l2 Level 0 Aisle F Booth 9.