ZENNER at E-World 2025: building resilient infrastructures with LoRaWAN®
Published: 31. Jan 2025
Cities and municipalities are increasingly using digital technology to overcome challenges they’re currently facing. Digitalisation with LoRaWAN® in particular opens up new opportunities to increase capacities for resilience, regeneration and development. The ZENNER team will be presenting digital solutions and products for resilient infrastructures at E-world in Essen, taking place from 11 — 13 February 2025. The topics of artificial intelligence and cybersecurity are newcomers to the portfolio.
Saarbrücken, January 2025. Nowadays, LoRaWAN® technology can be used in a variety of areas, such as for environmental monitoring, submetering, digitally controlling radiator thermostats or for precise analysis and forecasting of flood events. With the help of digital solutions, tough, resilient infrastructures are being built, making it possible to react quickly to various events and contribute to the issue of sustainability at the same time. Thanks to the information collected with sensors and measuring devices and transmitted via a LoRaWAN® network, cities and municipalities can develop more efficient and effective strategies to enable quick reactions — from smart metering and smart building solutions to integration into smart cities.
ZENNER has been one of the leading providers of digital solutions based on LoRaWAN® technology for years now. The company has successfully implemented more than 350 projects with municipal utilities, energy suppliers, municipalities and industry, and therefore has expertise and a wealth of experience to boot. At E-world 2025, ZENNER will present a portfolio of solutions that reflects this experience and supports municipal utilities and municipalities in building resilient structures.
Digital water management solutions
Droughts are happening more and more often, and for longer, groundwater levels are falling, and water scarcity is becoming a serious reality. All of this has an impact on water resources and presents municipalities and municipal water suppliers with new challenges. To help water suppliers switch to digital data collection via radio, ZENNER has developed a package of solutions for economical and comprehensive remote water meter reading: Metering as a Service (MaaS).
Metering as a Service meets all the requirements for a future-proof and sustainable water supply. The solution package combines precise ultrasonic water meters with the option of transmitting measurement data via two different kinds of radio technology — Wireless M-Bus (WM-Bus) and LoRaWAN®. The parallel wireless technology function of the ZENNER IUWS ultrasonic water meter offers users the flexibility to use both wireless reading methods at the same time.
This procedure is helpful, for example, in peripheral areas where LoRaWAN® network coverage is not yet sufficient. “With the IUWS and its parallel wireless technology function, the highest possible reading rates are achieved while resource use is minimised,” explains Samira Baars, Head of Internal Sales and Account Management at ZENNER International GmbH & Co. KG.
In order to configure ultrasonic water meters quickly and efficiently and adapt them to specific customer requirements, ZENNER has created the ZENNER Device Manager Basic app.
In addition to digital data transmission, a resilient water infrastructure also includes solutions that help to minimise network losses. Stade municipal utilities, together with ZENNER and HST Systemtechnik, have implemented a pilot project where losses can be detected and qualified with the help of LoRaWAN® technology.
Europe’s largest LoRaWAN® network
ZENNER’s LoRaWAN® network is currently available in more than 15 countries and already comprises more than 7.5 million measuring devices and sensors. This makes it by far the largest LoRaWAN® network in Europe: “Our LoRaWAN® network is already as large as the networks of our four largest competitors combined. This is because we have been taking a targeted approach to the network rollout since 2016 and are constantly developing new solutions,” explains Boris Stöckermann, Head of Business Development, Marketing, Digital Solutions and eCommerce at the Minol-ZENNER Group.
Smart submetering infrastructures
In addition to rapid data availability in the event of acute events, LoRaWAN® can also be used to continuously collect data, on energy consumption in buildings for example. All cities and municipalities are firmly focused on achieving the goal of a climate-neutral building stock by 2045 at the latest. “Submetering with LoRaWAN® helps property managers and residents identify potential for saving CO2 and costs, which in turn leads to heating energy being used more consciously in the long term. Submetering is, therefore, a business model that many of our customers from the municipal utility sector rely on,” reports René Claussen, Head of IoT & Digital Solutions at ZENNER.
Here, too, LoRaWAN® offers a whole host of added value and the option of integrating smart building solutions. For example, ZENNER’s BuildingLink solution for digitally controlling radiator thermostats can often help save more than 30 percent in heating energy and costs in practice.
LoRaWAN® gateway for efficient, powerful networking
The new ZENNER IoT Gateway outdoor 16 is another innovative solution that ushers in the next level of networking for LoRaWAN® applications. The LoRaWAN® gateway extends the existing IoT (Internet of Things) portfolio and was specially developed for IoT applications with LoRaWAN®. It is compatible with all common LoRaWAN® network servers and enables reliable, energy-saving data transmission over long distances. The gateway has 16 channels. Thanks to state-of-the-art LoRaWAN® technology, the gateway can support a wide range of applications – from smart cities to Industry 4.0.
Intelligent networks for smart cities
Power distribution networks form the technical backbone of the energy transition. Intelligent power grids, known as smart grids, combine the generation, storage and consumption of energy. ZENNER offers smart solutions to collect important data for intelligent network expansion and control. There is often no information available about the load situation of individual network strings. Defective transformers or overloads are also often only discovered in the event of a fault. With LoRaWAN® and the GridLink solution from ZENNER, this can now be achieved with simple means. In combination with suitable sensors, real-time data can be transmitted from local network transformer stations, so that the data can be evaluated at a central location and made available to the various network operation departments.
Artificial intelligence with ZENNER AI
ZENNER AI (artificial intelligence) is the next stage of development in the digitisation of municipal utilities, suppliers and municipalities. To this end, ZENNER is combining its extensive expertise in the area of IoT infrastructure with cutting-edge artificial intelligence. ZENNER AI gives users a new perspective on their data. Going forwards, ZENNER AI will also provide a glimpse of the future and form the basis for predicting water consumption and leaks, or for predictive maintenance of infrastructures such as pumps and co-generation units. As such, decisions can be made more efficiently and sustainably. Cities are thus becoming smarter, more resilient and more sustainable.
ZENNER Cybersecurity
With the new “ZENNER Cybersecurity powered by asvin,” ZENNER is not only offering smart and secure products, but also solutions that make it possible to make existing digital infrastructures more resistant to cyber threats. This is aimed at municipal companies and operators of critical infrastructures.
New cybersecurity requirements have been put in place across Germany and the EU, such as the second EU Directive on Network and Information Security (NIS2 Directive) and the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA). In cooperation with asvin, the Stuttgart-based cybersecurity specialist with special expertise in the municipal sector, ZENNER supports its customers in implementing regulatory requirements. The software and support solutions help companies identify risks in good time, assess gaps in security and make digital infrastructures more resilient in the long term. “We are proud to present our expertise to a wide range of experts for the very first time at E-World as part of the ZENNER Group,” says Mirko Ross, CEO of asvin.
Following the motto “Smart cities, powerful solutions,” ZENNER will present concepts for resilient infrastructures at E-world 2025 in Essen and can be found at Stand C114 in Hall 2.