Transmission link: how modern technologies help in the housing and communal services sector. Practical implementation of askue based on radio technology "Strizh Strizh telematics of work interruption"

LPWAN (Low-Power Wide-Area Network) is a new approach in radio communications used for devices and large distributed wireless telemetry networks. Its feature is low energy consumption (low-power) and wide territorial coverage (wide-area).

As the telecommunications infrastructure for “gadgets” was formed, it became obvious that the ability of instruments and devices to exchange information opens up numerous opportunities - from optimizing existing business processes to creating completely new economic models. This concept of telecommunications development is known as M2M or IoT. In Russia it is known under the term “Internet of Things”. Compared to networks serving people, two indicators needed radical improvement - connection costs and energy efficiency.

In the last 20 years, many wireless standards and networks that meet the requirements of the ever-increasing volume of data transmission between people - GSM, GPRS, 3G, LTE, Wi-Max, Wi-Fi. For the interaction of devices with each other, ZigBee, WirelessHart, LPWAN standards were developed.

LPWAN technology provides energy-efficient data transmission over long distances. STRIZH, using the LPWAN approach, creates devices capable of transmitting information over tens of kilometers and at the same time operating for several years on a single battery.

How STRIZH works based on LPWAN

The approach used to transmit data in the STRIZH network is very similar to the principle of operation of cellular networks.

Meters and sensors connected to STRIZH modems, or devices with already integrated radio modules, transmit readings to the Internet via a base station. Next, on the STRIZH servers, the data is processed and provided in a convenient form in a specially designed web interface. The reverse communication channel allows you to control individual devices and devices remotely.

However, unlike technology mobile communications, "STRIZH" uses its own protocol, which allows data to be transmitted over tens of kilometers and ensures autonomy of the sensors for over 10 years without replacing the power supply.

Why is LPWAN the future?

Existing wireless technologies are not able to meet the needs of individual applications for transmitting small amounts of data over long distances with high autonomy and low connection costs. As a rule, such applications belong to the field of machine-to-machine communication and the Internet of Things.

LPWAN is a technology that supports an entirely new class of telematics devices. Its appearance became possible thanks to the development of the component base: radio modules and transceiver equipment.

The main advantages of LPWAN over other technologies

• The range of one base station is up to 10 km in a metropolis, up to 50 km in open areas.
• One base station is enough to receive signals from 2,000,000 devices per day.
• It is easy to connect additional devices to the LPWAN network, with almost unlimited scalability.
• Metering devices are energy efficient, on average 10 years of operation from one AA battery. Base stations operate from a 220V network.
• No hubs or repeaters. A regular plumber or mechanic can install metering devices.
• Transmission on the 868 MHz frequency does not require licensing. This reduces the final cost of the system.
• It does not require a GSM network or the Internet to operate, which is important for villages and open areas.
• The LPWAN signal is transmitted from basements and through thick walls. It cannot be jammed, since the signal travels over a wide range of frequencies.

"STRIZH Telematics" - manufacturer " smart devices» based on new long-range wireless energy-efficient technology - LPWAN (Low-Power Wide Area Network). The most popular solutions are collecting meter readings for water, electricity, heat and gas for the housing and communal services sector. Additionally, innovative solutions for agriculture and security have been developed using the IoT concept.

LPWAN (Low-Power Wide-Area Network)- a class of wireless telematics devices that transmit data over a radio channel; The basic principle is digital data transmission over an ultra-narrow frequency band at low speeds.

A special feature of the technology is the long range of signal transmission from the end device to the receiving station (up to 10 km in urban areas and up to 40 km in open areas); long service life of end devices (more than 10 years without external power supply); cost-effectiveness and ease of implementation of solutions; excellent scalability due to a virtually unlimited number of connected sensors.

LPWAN is a global trend in machine-to-machine (M2M) communication for the Internet of Things (IoT). The technology is capable of connecting billions of devices around the world and doing it as cheaply as possible - unlike traditional telecom operators / GPRS / LTE, where power is required, or smart home protocols ZigBee / Z-Wave / M-Bus, where the signal range limited to 50 meters.

The long range of the STRIZH network allows you to build efficient network for smart devices. For example, to cover Moscow with a cellular network, several thousand base stations are required - their range is only 1-1.5 km. "STRIZH" requires less than 100 base stations for this purpose.

When one base station accounts for up to several hundred thousand various devices, its performance becomes a key parameter. Previously, for parallel processing of all frequency channels, the base station had to be built on the basis of processor server solutions and put up with their high power consumption, heat dissipation and high cost.

By moving frequency channel processing to NVIDIA GPUs with support for NVIDIA CUDA technology, we can achieve significantly better performance while being smaller in size, power consumption, heat dissipation, and price.

History of development

2017: Launch of the IoT franchise

The STRIZH network covers Moscow, Moscow region, St. Petersburg, Perm, Ufa, Grozny, Novokuibyshevsk, Stavropol and Syktyvkar. In 2016, STRIZH plans to cover all Russian cities with a population of one million with a “smart network”.

“Before Tesla, there were electric cars, cooling systems, new batteries, but only Elon Musk put together a breakthrough product from disparate technologies,” says Andrey Sinitsin, co-founder of the Strizh-Telematics company. “Of course, we are far from Tesla, but we were also able to figure out what the market needed and assemble a suitable product from the cubes.” At first glance, ordinary water and electricity meters are laid out on Sinitsin’s table. But they have built-in modems that can transmit captured data to Personal Area an Internet user - an employee of a housing and communal services company or an individual. Four years ago, Andrei Sinitsin and his partner Evgeniy Akhmadishin learned about a technology that allows them to make devices with a high transmission range and extremely low power consumption, and today they own a business with revenue of 4-6 million rubles per month.

Strizh-Telematics is a rare fusion of financial and engineering competencies for a technology startup. MIPT graduate Akhmadishin advised technology companies at KPMG and Deloitte, and worked as an investment director at the venture fund Mint Capital. “When in your fourth year of college you work as a programmer and meet an investment banker somewhere, you immediately want to become an investment banker,” recalls Evgeniy. - Well, I got caught, although I was trained as a radio engineer and had been holding a soldering iron since I was five years old. And then a friend with whom I was programming sold his company for $10 million to Yuri Milner’s DST. And I thought that I had gone somewhere wrong with these stupid finances.”

He learned from friends that a large European manufacturer of sensors that track the movement of objects has not yet started selling its devices to Russia.

Akhmadishin suggested that sensors could be supplied to track the number of cars on roads and parking lots, and invited the manufacturer to become its distributor.

And he called Sinitsin, whom he met at KPMG, as a partner; at that time he worked at the investment company A1. “In an investment fund, when you have closed several transactions, everything becomes clear from A to Z,” Sinitsin joins the story. — And getting involved in entrepreneurship is like getting infected with a sport where there is adrenaline: marathons or boxing. I want it - that’s all.”

But the delivered sensors did not live up to expectations. Each device transmitted a signal only 20 meters, but within the sensor network it could go tens of kilometers to the base station. In fact, without regular tuning by experienced engineers, the retransmission went poorly. Having delved into the technology, Akhmadishin saw a flaw in the method of data transmission (imported meters worked on the ZigBee protocol, which was predicted to have a great future for home gadgets powered by batteries). Having gathered familiar engineers from old connections at MIPT, the former investment director redesigned the sensor algorithms to work with the new LPWAN protocol. IBM, for example, relied on a modification of LPWAN technology called LoRa last year, considering it the most promising method of machine-to-machine interaction.

Akhmadishin and Sinitsin created their own version of LPWAN.

They narrowed the transmission band in the radio spectrum so that the level of interference was minimal. As a result, information is transmitted in a small volume, but with minimal energy consumption, far and without failures. Meters with an LPWAN modem transmit data to the Internet through a base station, which can be installed on the roof of any building. At a cost ten times lower than towers mobile operators such a station, according to the owners, is thousands of times more sensitive. And the modem created by Strizh-Telematics can operate for 10 years without recharging and is eight times cheaper existing analogues on GPRS or 3G.

Prototype modems were ready in the fall of 2012. The solution seemed ideal for the housing and communal services sector. “In Russia, housing and communal services contribute 6-7% of annual GDP, this is a huge industry and a huge field for automation,” explains Sinitsin. Potential buyers are management companies who want to remotely collect statistics on water consumption by residents and monitor unauthorized interventions in the operation of appliances. Akhmadishin and Sinitsin hoped to attract them with the simplicity and relative reliability of their devices. There were wired sensors, but running wires into apartments, installing a server to process information, etc. was a hassle. GPRS modems require regular recharging or changing batteries, and the cost of their operation depends on the tariffs of cellular operators.

The partners ordered the assembly of modems from a Russian manufacturer, whose name was not disclosed. But sales started only in the summer of 2013. In urban areas, the signal from ready-made meters spread only one or two kilometers. It took several months to refine the design in order to obtain a transmission range to the base station of up to 40-50 km. The first customers refused to believe in the reality of the stated characteristics.

“We come to negotiate with the integrator of dispatch systems for luxury buildings in Moscow,” recalls Andrei Sinitsin. “He assures us that in the houses entrusted to him with very deep basements, no remote reading collection systems will work. Then I persuaded him to go to the site. Our employee stood on the roof with the antenna, and he himself went down to the basement - and, pressing the button, he saw the signal. Within a month, we shipped him 1,000 modems.”

It quickly became clear that management companies prefer ready-made devices that can be put into operation with minimal setup. Strizh-Telematics reached an agreement with the Arzamas Instrument-Making Plant and began selling water meters with already built-in modules. “We purchased about 1,000 meters, realizing that in terms of price/quality ratio and reliability, the new technology is more profitable than devices with Internet modules or wired solutions,” says Andrey Botalov, head of the Moscow management company “Sunny City”. “Now you can immediately see water leaks and failed meters.” Another client of Strizh-Telematics agrees with him. “Management companies are monthly missing up to 30% of utility payments due to the fact that people do not submit payments or do not fully reflect real expenses,” notes Anton Dvoryankin, director of Morton Management Company Domservice Balashikha. “With wireless, fully automated data transmission, these problems do not arise.”

Strizh-Telematics does not have retail sales; deliveries to entire houses and residential complexes are more profitable. Monthly sales - 2000-3000 water and electricity meters. The latter so far account for 10% of supplies, since sales started at the end of 2015. The check of management companies varies from 500,000 rubles to several million for a batch of meters. Then they pay several hundred rubles monthly for technical support and use of a personal account on the Strizh-Telematics website, in which you can process the received data in any way. The company of Akhmadishin and Sinitsin installs base stations at its own expense if there is a prospect of connecting new clients in a given area of ​​the city.

Regional dealers, who account for about 25% of Strizh-Telematics’ revenue, help them negotiate with management companies. About 20% of revenue comes from exports - integrators and meter manufacturers resell Strizh-Telematics devices to management companies in Europe, the USA and Asia.

Over four years, entrepreneurs invested about 100 million rubles in the business, including reinvested profits. And now they are exploring new areas of application of LPWAN technology. For example, banking: several dozen modems were sold to a company specializing in security systems - for installation on ATMs to alert about break-ins. It is important for retail chains to monitor dozens of parameters in warehouses and trading floors to control the climate, electricity consumption, etc. Strizh-Telematics has equipped several stores of the Ural chain Monetka and the Siberian chain Maria Ra with sensors.

Negotiations are underway with the Chinese Haier. Akhmadishin and Sinitsin hope that the Chinese will agree to install their devices in retail refrigeration equipment instead of the Danish Danfoss. Danfoss Corporation seems to feel that they have a competitor. “The LPWAN system of Strizh-Telematics has a large coverage area and low power consumption, but because of this, this method of data transmission loses speed,” criticizes Ilya Bezdelgin, head of electronic components at Danfoss Russia. “Since the system uses a radio channel to transmit data, the signal may weaken, and then amplifiers will be needed to increase the coverage area.”

But Strizh-Telematics will soon offer customers the first batch of gas meters with modems. As its founders calculated, the Russian housing and communal services sector as a whole requires more than 400 million different meters. The sales market is huge, and the demand for new sensors will be increased by Federal Law 209, according to which, from July 2016, information for calculating utility bills must be provided only in in electronic format. “Perhaps, of course, people will write numbers on a piece of paper the old fashioned way and hand them over to the concierge, and the accountant of the management company will enter everything into the computer. But sooner or later, the convenience of new technologies must win,” Akhmadishin is sure.

Export also has good prospects. Strizh-Telematics is preparing for a tender from the Chinese BL Flow, which needs to purchase 8 million water meters with automatic collection of readings for installation in Chinese apartments. “In four years, we grew from three people in a coworking space to a profitable company with a staff of 30 people. Moreover, in our difficult times, we are not selling buckwheat, but building a technological business,” Sinitsin is proud. — Now do you understand why I moved from an investment company to the other side of the barricades? It’s nice to know that you are making necessary and useful world-class products.”

Strizh Telematics was founded in 2014. Its co-founders were Andrey Sinitsin and Evgeny Akhmadishin. The company was developing sensors and network solutions for the Internet of Things under the Strizh brand, used in telemetry systems in the areas of housing and communal services, security, smart cities and agriculture.

In 2014, they managed to attract the attention of President Vladimir Putin. But in 2016, the partners disagreed and divided the business.

Evgeniy Akhmadishin headed the Vaviot project on a similar topic and was arrested in 2017. Andrey Sinitsin continued the development of solutions under the Strizh brand within the framework of the Modern Radio Technologies (SRT) company. In 2018, he ceded this business to the creators of the Platon system, Igor Rotenberg and Alexander Shipelov.

Story

2018

The new owners of SRT are Igor Rotenberg and Igor Shipelov

In 2018, the company “Modern Radio Technologies” (SRT) changed its ownership. According to the Kontur.Focus database, its original founder Andrei Sinitsin, who owned 80% of the company, left the company.

His share passed to two new co-founders: businessmen Igor Rotenberg and Andrey Shipelov. The first has owned a 45% share since October, the second has owned a 35% share since June.

The share of another co-founder, Pavel Staryuk, who joined the company in 2017, remained unchanged and amounts to 20%.

Since October, Glonass-TM has been listed as the management company of SRT. Its ultimate owners also include Igor Rotenberg and Igor Shipelov.

Andrey Sinitsin chose not to comment to TAdviser on the change of company owners. SRT was unable to comment on it at the time of publication of the material. The SRT secretary refused to speak by phone with PR manager Pavel Heyderich.

STR is developing the Strizh IoT platform based on wireless LPWAN networks (photo - strij.tech)

In October, Minister of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Communications Konstantin Noskov said in an interview with TAdviser that he expects an increase in demand for sensors for the Internet of things and cited this area as an example, speaking about possible areas of investment big business within the framework of the national project “Digital Economy”.

Rotenberg and Shipelov are partners in other businesses. For example, according to the Platon road toll system. They are co-founders of RT-Invest Transport Systems, which operates Platon.

In 2017, the partners also bought 45% of the National Telematic Systems (NTS) holding company, created by the former vice president of Rostelecom Alexey Nashchekin.

Termination of Vaviot's activities

According to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, in April 2018, Vaviot LLC ceased its activities. At the same time, as of October 2018, the Telematic Solutions legal entity operates under this brand, where Evgeny Akhmadishin was also the CEO.

Created by Akhmadishin in 2016, Vaviot (legal entity Telematic Solutions) has since September 2018 been 13% owned by the CEO of the Coalco development group of companies Alexander Kuznetsov, 87% owned by the American company Vaviot Integral Systems". On the Coalco website, Vaviot is listed among the key projects that the development group is involved in.

In October 2018, by phone listed on the Vaviot website, a company employee told TAdviser that Akhmadishin had not been working for them for a long time.

2017

Arrest of Evgeny Akhmadishin

In November 2017, Evgeny Akhmadishin was arrested by order of the Basmanny Court of Moscow. The basis for the arrest was suspicion of fraud under Part 4 of Article 159 of the Criminal Code, which provides for liability for fraud committed organized group or on a particularly large scale.

The Basmanny court also arrested Oleg Filippov, development director of Absolut LLC, suspected of embezzlement of funds allocated for the maintenance and repair of Moscow's intelligent transport system, and Alexander Shukyurov, director of the capital's State Public Institution "Directorate of Capital Repairs", suspected of fraud. Read more.

2016

Creation of a new company - "Vaviot"

In 2016, as a result of the division of Strizh Telematics, a new company was created - Vaviot LLC. Evgeniy Akhmadishin was appointed general director. The company began to engage in activities similar to Strizh Telematics - the development of LPWAN solutions and the creation of an LPWAN network.

Vaviot not only develops an LPWAN network, but also produces the sensors themselves - for example, “smart” water meters connected to wireless network and transmitting readings on it. Systems for housing and communal services inherited the experience of developing systems for controlling road traffic, created by Strizh Telematics in 2011.

Decision on the Strizh-Telematics section

In 2016, Strizh Telematics split up. The reason for this was disagreements over the development strategy between the co-founders of the project, Andrei Bakumenko and Evgeniy Akhmadishin, who together owned 55% of the company, and its CEO Andrei Sinitsin.

2015

Skolkovo resident status

The STRIZH Telematics company, a developer of solutions in the field of Machine to Machine and Internet of Things based on wireless LPWAN technologies, received resident status in the cluster of space and telecommunication technologies of the Skolkovo Foundation. The company develops, implements and supports systems for remote collection of telemetry data in several industries: housing and communal services, transport, security, agriculture.

Business development

In 2015, the partners also began selling electricity meters. Monthly sales of Strizh-Telematics in 2016 amounted to 2000–3000 water and electricity meters. The check of management companies varies from 500 thousand rubles to several million for a batch of meters. Then customers pay monthly for technical support and use of a personal account on the Strizh-Telematics website, where they can process the received data.

Regional dealers helped them negotiate with management companies; in 2016, they accounted for about 25% of Strizh-Telematics’ revenue. About 20% of income came from exports - integrators and meter manufacturers resold Strizh-Telematics devices to management companies in Europe and Asia.

Over four years, entrepreneurs invested about 100 million rubles in the business, including reinvested profits. After that, they began to explore new areas of application of LPWAN technology. For example, banking: several dozen modems were sold to a company specializing in security systems - for installation on ATMs to alert about break-ins. It is important for retail chains to monitor dozens of parameters in warehouses and sales areas to control climate, electricity consumption, etc.

The founders of Strizh Telematics calculated that the Russian housing and public utilities sector as a whole requires more than 400 million different meters. They expected that the demand for new sensors would be increased by Federal Law 209, according to which, from July 2016, information for the calculation of utility bills should be provided only in electronic form.

2014: Putin became interested in the project

During a conversation at the forum, Vladimir Putin asked Andrei Sinitsin, after listening short description project - why is it needed if counters already exist to track resource expenditures? . To this, Sinitsin replied that in Russia very few utility meters are connected to remote monitoring systems. At best, electric - by wire. Readings from the rest are taken manually, which in itself leaves room for error and for providing approximate values. But the main thing is that many meters, for example, almost all water meters, are located inside apartments, and reading data from them is entirely up to the citizens.

2013: Start of sales

Sales of water meters with LPWAN modem started in the summer of 2013. Sinitsin and Akhmadishin ordered the assembly of modems from a Russian manufacturer, whose name was not disclosed. Several months were spent refining the design to obtain a transmission range to the base station of up to 40–50 km.

2010: Start of product development

The co-founder of Strizh Telematics, which sold solutions under the Strizh brand before SRT, is graduate Evgeniy Akhmadishin. He worked at KPMG and Deloitte, where he advised technology companies, and also at the venture capital fund Mint Capital as an investment director. He came up with the idea of ​​distributing sensors that track the movement of objects, which were produced by a large European manufacturer that had not yet established sales of its devices in Russia. Akhmadishin suggested that sensors could be supplied to track the number of cars on roads and parking lots.

Akhmadishin called Andrei Sinitsin, whom he met at KPMG, as a partner; at that time he worked at the investment company A1.

The sensors of the European company brought to Russia, according to Akhmadishin, did not live up to expectations. In particular, he found a flaw in the method of transmitting data from imported meters that worked on the ZigBee protocol. Having gathered familiar engineers from old connections at MIPT, the former investment director redesigned the sensor algorithms to work with the new LPWAN protocol.

One of Akhmadishin’s main technological partners at that stage was MIPT graduate Yuri Birchenko. He later founded Nwave, a company developing a cloud platform for machine-to-machine communication and IoT devices, through which sensors could exchange data and save battery power.

Akhmadishin and his colleagues created their own version of LPWAN. In 2012, the partners released prototypes of meters with an LPWAN modem. The solution seemed ideal to them for the housing and communal services sector. As Sinitsin explained earlier, in Russia the housing and communal services sector accounts for 6–7% of annual GDP, this is a huge industry and a huge field for automation. Potential buyers are management companies who want to remotely collect statistics on water consumption by residents and monitor unauthorized interventions in the operation of appliances.

Rice. 1. SNT "Dubrovo"

The gardening non-profit partnership (SNT) "Dubrovo" (Fig. 1) is located in the Vladimir region and has 190 plots. SNT has its own 250 kVA transformer, and all farms are equipped with old induction electricity meters.

Twenty years ago on garden plot SNT turned on only a couple of light bulbs, a tile and a radio point, but today electricity is consumed by numerous Appliances and garden tools. The development of legislation (“dacha amnesty”) and other factors have led to the fact that gardeners have turned seasonal “temporary buildings” into comfortable homes and remain in them all year round, which means they spend more energy.

Despite the satisfactory condition of the power transmission line and equipment, the total readings of individual meters were only 60–70% of the “head” meter on the part of the power grid company, and over time the percentage of electricity imbalance only increased.

Both the chairman and the owners understood that technical losses in the transformer and on the line are disproportionately small, and high unbalance is a consequence of commercial losses:

• theft of electricity (even a schoolchild can stop old meters);
• errors in the electricity metering system (residents have old electricity meters with an accuracy class of more than 2.0);
• intentional errors when taking readings (not everyone wanted to pay the bills);
• late payment (many people come only on weekends and holidays).

The chairman had his own statistics: about 10–15 gardeners stole electricity, another 40–50 owners regularly forgot to take readings or deliberately underestimated the numbers.

The problem was discussed several times at meetings, but no solution was developed. From year to year, the chairman of the partnership had to break the law: increase the cost of the resource and collect the missing amount from SNT members who regularly pay their bills.

At the beginning of 2016, at the general meeting of SNT, it was decided, along with the replacement of outdated metering devices, to equip the ASKUE village - automated system control and accounting of electricity, which is used to accurately calculate consumed electricity and consumption parameters at the substation. To do this, each metering unit (electricity meter) is equipped with a device that transmits readings to the control panel.

What needed to be taken into account

The main criteria for choosing an ASKUE from the partnership’s assets made up an impressive list. First of all, it was necessary that the electricity meter readings were not lost during transmission. In addition, the collection of consumption parameters at substations and power lines and the calculation of the amount of electricity consumed had to be done automatically - while it was necessary to provide the ability to further automate the collection of readings, data processing and billing to residents. Load management of individual consumers (usually defaulters) had to be done remotely. At the same time, based on the calculation of one metering point, budget restrictions were set for equipment.

Tests

Rice. 2. “Ampere-1 Split” meter

First of all, the chairman of the partnership needed to determine the technology for collecting data from electricity meters. In addition to ASKUE "STRIZH", SNT management tested wired PLC technology and meters with a GSM modem.

The PLC was abandoned in the first week: the line condition did not ensure reliable data transmission, and out of five test meters, readings came from only one. Eliminating twists, replacing wires and installing filters on the line did not fit into the SNT budget.

The high cost of devices and the costs of their installation and maintenance made a solution based on GSM unprofitable. Each meter equipped with a GSM module required software configuration and high-quality cellular network coverage. In addition, such a device cost twice as much as its analogues and required a monthly subscription fee.

At the same time, STRIZH solutions for country and cottage communities were also tested. The test kit included five single-phase electricity meters “Amper-1 Split” (Fig. 2) and a mini-base station (Fig. 3). The testimony went to cloud platform“Personal account”, to which only the chairman of the SNT had access, and without reference to the board building or the control panel. To track expenses and register energy theft or meter tampering, he only needed to have access to the Internet.

Remote collection of readings on ASKUE "STRIZH"

Rice. 3. Mini base station

Weatherproof electricity meters "Amper-1 Split" with a built-in radio modem were installed on overhead line supports. This approach allowed us to save costs on installing a subscriber panel, complicate residents’ access to the meter, and exclude the error of old metering devices from the calculation.

During test tests, ASKUE "STRIZH" showed the necessary reliability: data from all five installed "Amper-1 Split" electricity meters were successfully transmitted from electricity metering units through the base station to the board's personal account.

The required automation - uploading reports and issuing invoices - was available in the functionality of the web platform, and the ability remote control and load limitation was implemented in “Ampere-1” meters. Simple installation and a minimal set of equipment allowed us to fit into the SNT budget with a margin of 20%.

Results for the year

Currently, Ampere-1 Split meters are already in use in 90 farms of SNT Dubrovo, and during 2017 another 50 meters will be installed. They continue to be served by the base station installed during testing, since its capacity is still sufficient to connect the next hundred or thousand devices. Now unscrupulous gardeners cannot accidentally or intentionally forget to report on the consumed kilowatts: “Amper-1” hourly sends data on energy consumption via radio channel to the personal account of SNT “Dubrovo”, and the return channel allows the chairman to remotely control the meter settings and selectively limit the network load for defaulters . From April 2016 to May 2017, the electricity imbalance of SNT Dubrovo fell to 10%. By 2018, the chairman plans to fully equip SNT with “smart” meters. According to his calculations, 100% implementation of ASKUE "STRIZH" will bring the imbalance to an acceptable 1.5–2%.

Advantages of ASKUE

PLC solutions have a low cost and solve the problem of remote collection of readings, but the shortcomings of the protocol and high requirements for the quality of electrical networks can create a number of difficulties in transmitting data from the meter to the user interface, and high level interference in the line can negate the signal throughput. At the same time, the fight against such interference requires either turning off their source (and it still needs to be found) or installing special filters, which leads to additional costs.

Solutions based on short-range communication protocols are not suitable for use in villages, since stable operation of such a system requires the installation of additional repeaters, which leads to a sharp increase in the overall project cost.

Meanwhile, a wireless solution based on LPWAN technology is suitable for building an electricity control system in villages that meets all requirements. The range of data transmission via radio protocol from the modem to the radio station is 10 kilometers and provides readings from meters that are located at various distances throughout the village. In addition, one base station can cover the needs of the entire village, taking into account its expansion for several years to come. The protocol provides protection from various types of interference, and due to the fact that the use of intermediate equipment is not required, the total cost of implementation is several times cheaper compared to short-range radio communication systems.