Why LoRaWAN Technology is Groundbreaking

LoRaWAN fits into the IoT vision in several important ways.

LoRaWAN is being heralded as the backbone of the IoT. It truly supports innovative solutions that increase efficiency, reliability, safety and security within industrial processes and products. It is critical to IoT no matter what you call it - Smart Industry, Industry 4.0. But of course not just industry, healthcare, Oil&gas, universities, food & bev, pretty much all business that still needs a brick and mortar presence can benefit from cost effective real-time monitors and controls.

It stays true to the original vision of IoT. It is open-source and transmits over unlicensed frequency bands. That means you don’t pay for data usage. Plus it’s easy to develop your own LoRaWAN solutions and in true IoT form, the hardware and components should be interoperable between numerous vendors. As well, it provides a far longer range than WiFi or Bluetooth, works well indoors, and is especially valuable for remote areas where there are few cell towers. This is valuable for installations like oil wells or mines whose locations are dictated by the resources they are extracting. Also, as manufacturing and processing organizations are moving back to North America where labour and land prices are much higher than offshore prices, they will be forced to locate in more remote locations. LoRaWAN has embedded end-to-end AES-128 encryption, geolocation so no need for additional GPS add-on applications, plus it is low-power optimized, high capacity, multi-tenant and can be used indoors or outdoors.

Want to know some more details? Long range means signals can travel over a distance of more than 10 miles in rural areas. To give perspective, WiFi lasts about 150 feet, Bluetooth about 30 feet.

The low power aspect is significant because it means that batteries last a long long time (up to 10 years). Another way it conserves power is adaptive spreading which is inherent in the LoRa technology. This means the further from the gateway the higher the spread, a higher spread would normally take more power except that in this case the LoRa network knows to compensate by sending the data at a slower rate.

LoRaWAN has a high capacity - millions of messages can be transmitted per gateway which means you don’t have gaps in data and don’t have to limit the number of devices you deploy in the field.

Some last advantages include the fact that firmware updates can be done over-the-air and roaming is done seamlessly over different networks. LoRa signals are very resistant to interference, they are bi-directional, scalable, secure (network traffic can’t be listened to or captured).

Technical details aside, I am very excited to see what other types of applications and use cases people come up with. As of now, there are over 7 billion IoT devices, and this number is expected to grow to 50 billion by 2025! Some projects I have read about recently include things like weather reporting, smart agriculture, facial recognition applications, a gunfire detection app, a clothing microchip to verify authenticity, robotic maintenance sensors, smart crosswalks, and even something called smart dust - a system of tiny microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) such as sensors, robots, or other devices that can be used in health diagnostics.

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Steam Is So Cool

OK so maybe cool isn’t the best word to describe it… but it is amazing and it has been utilized by human beings for thousands of years!

Water increases in volume by 1,700 times at standard temperature and pressure; this change in volume can be converted into mechanical work.

The first steam engine we know of was invented around 30 BC. Since then it has been reinvented in many many different formats and functions. From opening temple doors to powering a church organ to a cannon and a mill wheel, steam was utilized by cultures around the world. Steam engines were used as the prime mover in pumps, locomotives, steam ships, traction engines, steam lorries and other road vehicles, and were essential to the Industrial Revolution. Steam heat has been around since 1745. Steam heat systems are extremely durable, they are efficient and low cost (while hydrogen for example is projected to cost twice to three and a half times as much as current heating systems). It’s clean energy, it’s cheap, isn’t flammable and has no toxic side effects.

Today steam turbines are used to generate more than 80% of the world's electricity. In addition steam is used to power machinery and even aircraft carriers, sterilize laboratory equipment without the use of harsh chemicals, clean fabric or soil, humidification, atomization, food production, distillation, pasteurization and much more.

As companies worldwide get closer and closer to their Net Zero deadlines, everyone is scrambling to find new sources of power and heat. Steam is essential, in fact many biofuels require steam as part of their production. Plus most power stations use subcritical steam to spin their turbines, but the latest and most efficient power stations are using supercritical steam.

What is supercritical steam you ask? Steam is considered to be supercritical once its pressure pushes it past the critical point where water and vapor coexist. It is hotter and under more pressure than regular steam and is able to release more energy to the power station.

Now for the newest breakthrough. Scientists and engineers in Australia have used solar panels with mirrors to produce the same quality steam as used in supercritical power stations. After their success similar installations were deployed in Greece and Japan.

This technology has the ability to revolutionize our energy future. We even see some organizations looking at Ultra-supercritical steam. The future looks bright for steam!

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How to Get Funding for Your Optimization Projects

Want to know a foolproof way to get funding for your optimization projects?

Ya sorry, there is no foolproof way. HOWEVER I find that a successful approach is to propose several layers of changes with differing goals, and attach ROI to each and productivity rates.

Take time to frame your optimization proposal in terms of short and long term gains. Take into consideration the entire gamut of advantages including increased productivity, performance and revenue, lowered costs, improved employee and customer satisfaction, industry goodwill, competitive advantage, reduced turnaround time, diversification and risk mitigation, and much more.

Consider your audience - the head of the union wants to know if these changes are going to cost jobs or if you are building in programs to re-train employees which may actually fuel some opportunities to reward high performers and motivate underperformers. The CFO wants to know timelines in terms of budget and ROI. The plant manager wants to understand how much productivity will increase because that is how he personally is measured in his job. There is a whole new role as well, the VP of Sustainability is looking for the environmental advantages of optimization and the more clear you can be with those numbers (how many tonnes of CO2 will not be produced), the better.

Optimization projects often have a ripple effect. Be sure to mention how it will benefit safety, employee training and upcycling, product line diversification and increased output as well as cost cutting methods.

Be prepared for competing requirements. We all know that companies should be continuously looking to measure and improve efficiency. They should invest in technology and infrastructure on an ongoing basis but the reality is that these are often railroaded for more “urgent” tasks, repairs that can’t wait, a new warehouse to add capacity, that sort of thing. So sometimes you need a workaround.

There is another way....

There are all sorts of funding opportunities around energy rebates.

• Energy Rebates - have been known to fund 50% of steam trap monitoring projects including covering steam trap inspection as well as steam trap monitoring equipment and defective trap replacement or repair in parts of Canada and US.

• Green Technology Retrofit Rebates - Ontario and other governments have committed billions of dollars to modify and enhance factories and industrial businesses to work toward ‘net zero carbon’ status
  

• Large Volume Program - for companies use a large portion of their green budget for one single project (particularly if they have multiple sites all participating)

• IESO Conservation Fund - for businesses who are reducing their electric energy use

• Natural Gas Demand Side Management - another government fund available to businesses who are able to reduce their need for natural gas

• US DOE -free energy audits, rebates for efficient heating systems, reduced costs for efficient technology solutions

• National Grid - enhanced steam trap incentive

• Many, many more - incentive and rebate programs are available through local and federal programs.

I personally find that optimization is its own reward. The satisfaction I get from improving processes is extreme. I also am a proponent of making continuous small updates all the time. Waiting until the situation is critical and requires extremely aggressive timelines and carries a high risk is less than ideal. There is no easy and foolproof way to get funding for your next optimization project but there definitely are some approaches that work better than others.

To see how Pulse can help you click here for a demo