Empowering Utilities with LoRaWAN Smart Metering on The Things Stack Enterprise and Cloud
From leak detection to energy efficiency, The Things Stack powers smarter metering and forward-looking cities.
At [Enlit 2025], The Things Industries is highlighting how LoRaWAN® technology and its network server platform – [The Things Stack] – are enabling utility companies to deploy smart metering at massive scale. Utilities worldwide are embracing LoRaWAN for smart water, gas, and electricity meters to gain real-time insights and improve efficiency. Recent projects exemplify this trend: IoT provider Connexin, for instance, is using The Things Industries’ LoRaWAN Network Server to roll out 150,000 smart water meters for Severn Trent Water in the UK, part of a broader initiative that now connects a quarter of a million meters across several water companies. In Austria, Wien Energie – the country’s largest regional energy provider – has adopted an on-premises deployment of The Things Stack to power a citywide IoT network in Vienna. These networks provide near real-time consumption data, helping detect leaks and optimize resource use. Customers receive timely alerts about unusual water usage to save on bills, while utilities can better meet targets for reducing waste and leakage. The Things Stack, offered in both Enterprise (on‑premises) and Cloud (hosted) versions, provides the flexible deployment options and advanced features needed to support such critical smart metering initiatives.
The Things Stack Enterprise: On-Premises Control and Reliability for Utilities
For national and regional utility companies that require full control over their data and infrastructure, The Things Stack Enterprise delivers a private, on-premises LoRaWAN Network Server solution. Deploying on-premises gives the utility total data sovereignty, ensuring all sensitive metering data stays under company control and complies with strict industry regulations. This enterprise-grade platform is purpose-built for reliability and scale: it has a distributed, fault-tolerant architecture for high availability (ensuring continuous uptime), and elastic capacity to support growth from thousands to millions of devices without service degradation. By running The Things Stack in their own data centers (or private cloud), utilities can guarantee long-term stability for their IoT operations while tailoring the system to their specific needs.
Key advantages of The Things Stack Enterprise for smart metering include:
- Data Sovereignty & Compliance: On-premises deployment ensures full control over metering data and infrastructure, helping utilities meet strict privacy and regulatory standards while keeping data in-country.
- High Availability: A fault-tolerant, redundant architecture keeps networks running around the clock, supporting critical utility operations with guaranteed uptime.
- Scalability: Designed to grow from thousands to millions of devices without performance loss, enabling utilities to scale smart metering across entire regions.
- Security: Enterprise-grade security protects communications and device credentials with encrypted traffic and secure key storage, safeguarding sensitive IoT data.
- Integration & Extensibility: Open APIs and multi-tenant support simplify integration with existing systems such as billing and analytics platforms. Utilities can tailor and expand their networks to meet evolving operational needs.
- Dedicated Support: Customers receive 24/7 enterprise assistance from The Things Industries’ experts, ensuring smooth deployment, maintenance, and long-term reliability.
By leveraging these capabilities, Wien Energie and others have laid a foundation for city-wide IoT connectivity that is secure, resilient, and scalable. As The Things Industries’ CEO noted, The Things Stack Enterprise “combines availability, scalability, and security” to let organizations scale their IoT initiatives with confidence. An on-premises network server empowers utilities to meet strict uptime and compliance demands while pursuing innovative smart metering use cases.
The Things Stack Cloud: Managed LoRaWAN with Global Scale
For utilities that prefer a fully managed solution, The Things Stack Cloud provides a high-performance LoRaWAN Network Server hosted by The Things Industries. This cloud service allows for rapid deployment of a smart metering network without the need to install or maintain server infrastructure – a cost-effective and easily deployed approach for utility IoT projects. The Things Stack Cloud offers the same core capabilities as the enterprise version, but as a scalable service accessible over the Internet. It is a go-to option for many industrial deployments, providing built-in network monitoring and alerting tools, multi-region coverage, and the ability to interoperate with other LoRaWAN networks via Packet Broker. Utilities can start with a small pilot and seamlessly scale up to nationwide meter rollouts on this platform.
In practice, The Things Stack Cloud has proven its ability to handle large-scale smart metering deployments. IoT solution providers like Connexin have leveraged the platform to deploy LoRaWAN networks for major water utilities in the UK, connecting on the order of hundreds of thousands of smart water meters across regions. For example, the Severn Trent Water project in Coventry and Warwickshire (150,000 meters) uses The Things Industries’ network server in conjunction with LoRaWAN-connected Iron smart meters. The cloud’s ability to handle large device fleets with ease and reliability lets utilities focus on using data for leak detection, demand management, and customer engagement instead of managing servers.
Key advantages of The Things Stack Cloud for smart metering include:
- Ease of Deployment: A fully managed SaaS platform that lets utilities start fast. Devices and gateways can be onboarded in minutes with no local servers to maintain, cutting setup time and IT complexity.
- Scalability & Performance: Automatically scales from thousands to millions of devices. The Cloud Plus tier supports even the largest LoRaWAN deployments with consistent performance.
- Monitoring & Reliability: Built-in dashboards provide real-time visibility into network health. The Things Industries manages uptime, updates, and maintenance to ensure reliable, always-on operation.
- Global Reach & Interoperability: Multi-region support lets utilities deploy across countries on one platform. Data can stay local for compliance or roam securely via the LoRaWAN Packet Broker.
- Security & Compliance: End-to-end encryption, secure key management, and regional data residency keep sensitive metering data protected and compliant.
- Simplified Onboarding: Bulk import and “keyless” provisioning streamline activation for large device fleets while minimizing manual work and errors.
- Seamless Integration: Open APIs and webhooks connect LoRaWAN data directly to billing, analytics, and enterprise systems for real-time insights and automation.
By choosing the cloud deployment, utilities hand off the complexity of running a carrier-grade IoT network to The Things Industries. They gain a proven, scalable foundation for smart metering without needing in-house LoRaWAN expertise. This model suits smaller utilities or those rapidly expanding from pilots to full rollouts. Large-scale UK water metering projects demonstrate that The Things Stack Cloud can handle nationwide scale with enterprise-level security and reliability.
Conclusion: Accelerating Smart Metering with LoRaWAN
LoRaWAN-based smart metering is becoming a game-changer for water and energy providers, enabling them to improve operational efficiency, reduce losses, and enhance customer service. The Things Industries, through its The Things Stack Enterprise and Cloud offerings, has emerged as a key enabler in this domain. Both deployment options bring enterprise-grade reliability, security, and scalability to utility IoT projects, whether a utility opts to run the network server in-house for maximum control, or use the cloud service for ease of use and global reach. These capabilities translate into tangible outcomes: faster leak detection and repair, more accurate billing with up-to-date consumption data, and the ability to meet sustainability and regulatory goals by closely monitoring usage patterns.
As demonstrated by the real-world projects with Wien Energie and major UK water companies, a robust LoRaWAN network server is the backbone of any large-scale metering rollout. The Things Stack provides that backbone, allowing utilities to confidently connect millions of meters and other sensors. This LoRaWAN connectivity is also future-proof – once the network is in place for metering, it can be extended to other smart city and utility use cases (e.g. smart lighting, flood sensors, grid monitoring), multiplying the return on investment. According to The Things Industries, such LoRaWAN solutions help energy companies and cities “improve efficiency, reduce costs, and contribute to sustainability goals”.
In summary, The Things Stack Enterprise and The Things Stack Cloud each offer distinct advantages for smart metering initiatives: - Enterprise is ideal for utilities demanding full control, on-premises data retention, and tailor-made integrations with guaranteed uptime. - Cloud is ideal for those seeking a quick-to-deploy, managed solution that can scale effortlessly and adapt to multi-region deployments.
By choosing the deployment model that best fits their operations, utilities can accelerate their smart metering journey with a trusted LoRaWAN platform at the core. The outcome is a connected, intelligent infrastructure that uses IoT to conserve resources, empower consumers with data, and drive the next generation of sustainable utilities: a vision front and center at Enlit 2025.
