Made in KAUST

Residential energy data transmitters, that transforms traditional energy meters to smart meters, were installed in 2088 households in KAUST. They are the first of their kind and completely designed in KAUST and mass-manufactured to cater the needs of our community. This is one of the largest deployment of LoRaWAN (the technology that provides the connectivity) devices in the Middle East region. KAUST residents will be able to see their household energy consumption in realtime.

A promising journey

The journey began during the “Design for KAUST” competition organized by the former MakerSpace Community Club and KAUST Residential services to develop low cost solutions for the KAUST city. Team members, Raeece Naeem and Prabhu Murugesan proposed a design based on Long range wireless technology – LoRaWAN, that would convert existing energy meters to smart meters at a fraction of the cost of replacing them with new smart meters.

Prototyping to assembling

The design and prototyping were done in 2018. To make the design into reality, the makers visited Shenzhen, China and made a custom printed circuit board enclosure and power supply to make it a complete product. Mass manufactured parts arrived in KAUST in July 2019. They were assembled by the Facilities Operations team which resembled a factory setup for couple of weeks. The field deployment of energy readers was completed in December 2019. KAUST IT networking team collaborated with the Facilities Operations team and provided the LoRaWAN infrastructure and networking support. 

Future smart city project would benefit from the LoRaWAN infrastructure developed and the big data collected from the energy readers. The team aims to get insights into household energy consumption patterns and reduce the carbon footprint of KAUST.