Energy + Environment

Wind farms, substations, pumping stations, treatment plants and district heating pipelines are widely distributed, usually unstaffed and sometimes without power or network access. If you only learn their condition on the next site visit, you react late and drive out too often. IoT sensors and gateways report voltage, pressure, vibration, consumption and emissions automatically, over cellular, LoRaWAN or satellite. Here you will find more than 80 solution examples from municipal utilities, grid operators, water utilities and renewable energy operators, each with user, technology and implementation partner.

IoT in Energy: What Connected Plants, Grids and Meters Deliver Today

IoT in the energy sector means that wind turbines, secondary substations, meters, pumping stations and pipelines report their own condition, instead of a technician reading it on the next site visit. Digitalization in utilities therefore almost always starts with transparency: how heavily is the grid loaded, how much is consumed where, and which asset is going to fail next?

Unlike in a factory, the equipment is not in one building. It is spread across hundreds of square kilometers, at sea, under the road or in valve houses without a power supply, and it is critical infrastructure. The solution examples on this page show how municipal utilities, grid operators, water utilities and renewable energy operators have solved this.

What Is IoT-Based Energy Monitoring?

IoT-based energy monitoring automatically captures electricity, gas, water and heat at meters and assets and sends the readings continuously to a platform. There, consumption is compared, load peaks become visible and deviations trigger alerts, such as a badly adjusted ventilation system or a burst pipe. Unlike an annual meter reading, it delivers values every 15 minutes or every hour, and it provides the data foundation for energy management under ISO 50001. More in the use case energy monitoring.

Typical IoT Applications in Energy, Water and the Environment

Grid Monitoring and Smart Grid in the Distribution Network

With heat pumps, wall boxes and rooftop solar, the low-voltage grid is becoming a bottleneck, and that is exactly where measurements used to be missing. German grid operator Regionetz fitted its substations with sensors for voltage, current and temperature. The data flows via MQTT into an IoT platform and builds a digital twin of the grid that shows overloads early and forms the basis for load management under Section 14a of the German Energy Industry Act (EnWG). The example digital grid monitoring for low-voltage networks describes the project from workshop to live operation.

Smart Metering and Smart Meter Gateways

Smart metering systems consist of a digital meter and a smart meter gateway that transmits the readings in encrypted form. Metering service provider co.met manages around four million metering points and connects the gateways with a global SIM that switches automatically between mobile networks (smart meter gateways via cellular). Water works the same way: Heitland's ultrasonic meters join Deutsche Telekom's NB-IoT network as soon as they are installed, and Gelsenwasser is rolling out around 200,000 digital water meters. More in the use case smart metering.

Predictive Maintenance for Wind Turbines

Every unnecessary trip to an offshore turbine costs money and depends on weather and sea state. Woodward Kempen has equipped around 18,000 wind turbines with its frequency converters. Materna sends their power and sensor data via cellular, cable or satellite to the cloud, where a machine learning model detects patterns that point to faults (predictive maintenance for offshore wind turbines). ZF monitors its wind turbine gearboxes the same way and knows in advance which part needs replacing (predictive maintenance for wind turbines). More in the use case predictive maintenance.

Condition Monitoring in Hydropower and Solar

Italian energy company CVA operates 32 hydropower plants across around 3,200 square kilometers in the Aosta Valley. Retrofitted sensors on turbines and generators measure vibration, temperature, pressure and flow, so maintenance knows the condition of each plant without driving out to it (condition monitoring in hydropower plants). On the roof of a REWE logistics center in northern Germany, EHA remotely controls and monitors a 1,377 kWp solar plant whose power is consumed entirely on site (solar expansion with remote access).

Energy Monitoring and Energy Management for Municipalities and Businesses

Many municipal utilities turn their metering infrastructure into a service. Stadtwerke Krefeld offers business customers energy management on an IoT platform and uses the same platform to monitor its district heating network with 1,500 meters and groundwater levels with 450 sensors (energy monitoring for municipal utilities). Gelsenwasser offers municipalities and companies an energy monitor that detects anomalies with AI. Its first analyses uncovered excess consumption in schools caused by a badly adjusted ventilation system (AI-supported energy management). More in the use case IoT-based energy management system.

Remote Monitoring and Telemetry in Water and Wastewater

Pumping stations, stormwater tanks and treatment plants sit outside town and run around the clock. The Würzburg wastewater utility monitors 70 stormwater pumping stations from its control center. When the 3G network was switched off, FleX Automation replaced the old modems with edge gateways that communicate over VPN using the DNP3 telemetry protocol and keep the existing controllers in use (remote monitoring after the 3G shutdown). At the Bad Pyrmont-Lügde treatment plant, blowers and compressors account for 60 to 70 percent of energy costs. Remote monitoring with condition monitoring and energy management saves site visits and flags worn parts before they waste power (remote monitoring for wastewater treatment plants).

District Heating and Geothermal Energy

Heating networks run under the street, and every manual pressure reading means opening a manhole, securing it and climbing down. IIoT pressure monitoring turns this into a value on a dashboard (pressure monitoring for district heating networks). In Iceland, grid operator Veitur monitors the pressure along an almost 30 kilometer hot water pipeline, including valve houses with no power and no communication link (pressure monitoring of geothermal infrastructure).

Environmental Monitoring and Emissions

The EU methane regulation requires operators to measure and report methane emissions at all sites. Hamburg alone has more than 600 gas pressure regulating and metering stations that used to be inspected by hand. Stationary methane sensors now monitor them continuously (continuous methane monitoring). In Stuttgart, connected Filter Cubes from MANN+HUMMEL remove more than 80 percent of particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide from roadside air and only run when the readings call for it (IoT against urban air pollution). More in the use case emissions management.

Cybersecurity: Energy Assets Are Critical Infrastructure

Every remote access point to a wind farm or substation is also a potential attack path. BayWa r.e. maintains most of its solar and wind farms remotely and therefore installed intrusion detection directly on its existing energy gateway, purely as software and without extra hardware in the field. It analyzes communication passively and reports attacks and fault conditions in real time (attack detection at the edge of a wind farm). Anyone planning IoT in energy supply should build in certificate management, encrypted transmission and central updates from day one.

Which Connectivity Fits Energy and Water Utilities

For meters and measuring points in basements or manholes, NB-IoT and LTE-M work well because they penetrate walls and run on battery for years. LoRaWAN covers an entire city with a few gateways and is widely used by municipal utilities for water and heat meters. Pumping stations, substations and generation assets are usually connected to the control system over 4G or 5G with VPN, and offshore sites add cable or satellite. Telemetry protocols such as DNP3, IEC 60870-5-104, IEC 61850 or Modbus TCP run on top.

How to Start an IoT Project in the Energy Sector

Start with a place where someone drives out today to read a value, or where a failure is expensive: a substation at its load limit, a remote pumping station, a gearbox with a history of damage. Regionetz had no IoT experience, began with a two-day workshop and tested the technology in a one-year proof of concept before moving to live operation. Clarify early which system the data flows into, such as the control system, SCADA, ERP or a customer portal, and who operates the gateways.

Find IoT Providers with References in Energy and Environment

Every solution example on this page names the implementation partner, the technology used and usually the user, including Regionetz, Stadtwerke Krefeld, Gelsenwasser, BayWa r.e., CVA, ZF and the Würzburg wastewater utility. This shows you who has already delivered a comparable project. If you briefly describe your project via the contact form, we will connect you with suitable providers.