IoT and LoRaWAN® for Energy Management: Boost Efficiency

IoT and LoRaWAN for Energy Management

For years, productivity and energy savings were treated as competing goals. The webinar you’ve just read flips that script with field evidence: when organizations instrument their assets with low-power IoT and close the loop from measurement → insight → control, they unlock double wins—higher output and lower consumption.

This is precisely where Actility and LoRaWAN® come in. Actility’s ThingPark platform provides the long-range, low-power connectivity—and the industrial-grade network server and data normalization—needed to deploy battery-powered sensors at scale, indoors and outdoors, across factories, buildings, hotels, campuses, and utilities. Paired with H Experience (now within the Decide for Action Group), which delivers the application layer for energy analytics and equipment control, companies move fast from “we see our bills” to “we know where, when, and why we consume—and we can act on it.”

The webinar surfaced multiple proof points:

  • Rapid, low-capex instrumentation. In a hotel chain rollout, ~30–60 sensors per site (electricity, gas, water) created a sub-metering map without rewiring—typical wireless install is markedly cheaper than wired, and LoRaWAN® gateways can cover an entire building.
  • Immediate, actionable insights. Simply measuring revealed outliers and best practices—like a kitchen oven left on all day, which pushed energy per pizza high enough to erase margins. Process tweaks delivered double-digit savings quickly (≈ 15–20% in the program shared).
  • From dashboards to decisions. Beyond visualization, H Experience models the asset hierarchy (sites, floors, rooms, lines, machines), calculates KPIs (e.g., energy per bottle with OEE in packaging), and drives behavioral and automated control.
  • Closed-loop automation. Examples included dynamic ventilation by room usage/CO₂, predictive heating (pre-heat curves by building thermals and weather), load shifting to off-peak tariffs, and solar hot-water self-consumption that suppresses night-time heating when sunny days are forecast.

Under the hood, Actility’s private LoRaWAN® networks (ThingPark Enterprise) give enterprises full control—on-prem or cloud—while solving a classic IoT blocker: interoperability. Different vendors encode data differently; Actility’s network server normalizes payloads and exposes consistent APIs so applications like H Experience can turn raw readings into reliable, fleet-wide KPIs and automations. The result is a platform you can start small (a handful of sensors, one gateway) and scale to thousands of devices and sites without changing architecture.

Why now? Energy prices are volatile, regulations (e.g., CSR/CSRD, national decrees on tertiary buildings) are tightening, and stakeholders expect measurable progress. The good news: wireless, battery-powered sensing + smart control routinely delivers fast ROI—sensors are typically €80–€200 (air quality higher, clamp-on electrical metering ~€100–€120), gateways around €600, and SaaS + network licensing only a few euros per sensor per month. Compared to heavy retrofits (insulation, windows, major HVAC replacements), the digital layer is lighter, faster, and often pays back in months—while informing where capex will have the biggest impact later.

This article translates the webinar’s lessons into a practical playbook: the pressures forcing change, the enabling stack (with LoRaWAN® at its core), the applications that work today, and the business benefits you can quantify. Most importantly, it shows how Actility + H Experience (Decide for Action) help organizations move from isolated pilots to repeatable, scalable programs that drive sustainable growth.

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Shmuel Solomon
Shmuel Solomon, Actility

“Energy sector leaders tell us today they face too many obstacles to scale digital solutions. With wireless IoT and LoRaWAN, we help them move from pilot frustrations to industrial-grade deployments that deliver real savings.“

Key Takeaways

  • IoT and LoRaWAN® enable fast, low-cost energy optimization, with wireless sensors that require no rewiring and cover entire buildings or factories.
  • Sub-metering and digital twins turn raw consumption data into actionable KPIs (energy per room, per meal, per bottle), driving both savings and productivity.
  • Immediate ROI is possible: deployments typically deliver 15–20% energy savings within months, with sensors costing as little as €80–200.
  • Dynamic control systems (HVAC, heating, load shifting, solar self-consumption) reduce waste while improving comfort and output.
  • Regulatory compliance made simple: LoRaWAN® data streams support frameworks like Decree Tertiaire and CSRD with auditable records.
  • Scalable and multi-purpose networks: Once deployed, the same LoRaWAN® infrastructure supports many use cases—from energy management to predictive maintenance or asset tracking.
  • Actility’s ThingPark platform solves interoperability issues, normalizing sensor data and providing a secure, industrial-grade foundation for enterprise IoT.

Table of Contents

The Pressures Facing Today’s Businesses

The shift towards combining productivity and energy efficiency is not happening in isolation. As highlighted during the webinar, companies across Europe and beyond are facing mounting pressures that make this transformation urgent and unavoidable.

Energy Costs and Volatility

Energy prices have been rising steadily, with sharp peaks linked to geopolitical events and supply chain disruptions. For sectors like hospitality, manufacturing, or logistics, energy is now one of the largest operating costs. A simple example shared in the webinar was a hotel chain discovering that one pizza oven left running all day erased the margin on pizzas sold. Without digital monitoring, such hidden inefficiencies remain invisible—and costly. By deploying wireless LoRaWAN® sensors, companies can quickly uncover these patterns and reduce waste before bills spiral out of control.

Regulatory and ESG Requirements

In France, regulations such as the Decree Tertiaire require enterprises to cut building energy consumption over time, while the European CSRD directive extends mandatory sustainability reporting to thousands of companies, including mid-sized businesses. These frameworks impose stricter KPIs and timelines, forcing organizations to move from high-level CSR commitments to data-driven, auditable reporting. LoRaWAN® sensors connected via Actility’s ThingPark platform provide the granular, normalized consumption data that makes such compliance practical and reliable.

Operational Efficiency Demands

Even without regulation, organizations are under constant pressure to “do more with less.” In industry, measuring energy per unit produced (e.g., per bottle in a packaging line) shows not only sustainability performance but also operational bottlenecks. By combining production metrics (OEE) with consumption data through IoT, companies achieve a double gain: higher throughput with lower energy waste.

Stakeholder Expectations and Brand Image

Employees, investors, and customers increasingly demand evidence of responsible energy practices. As noted in the webinar, consumers are willing to switch loyalty based on sustainability, and employees want to work in organizations aligned with their values. By adopting scalable, wireless IoT monitoring, enterprises can not only prove their progress with real data but also strengthen their reputation as leaders in sustainable innovation.

Productivity vs. Energy Efficiency: A False Dilemma?

For decades, companies assumed that boosting productivity inevitably meant consuming more energy. More shifts, more machines, more HVAC running hours—all leading to higher bills. Conversely, cutting energy consumption was seen as a constraint that could slow down operations. The webinar discussions made it clear: this is a false dilemma.

Stakeholder Expectations and Brand Image

Digital transformation and IoT connectivity are proving that efficiency and productivity can reinforce each other. With wireless LoRaWAN® sensors connected through Actility’s ThingPark platform, businesses can:

  • Measure consumption in context—not just total bills, but energy per room-night in a hotel, per pizza baked, or per bottle produced in a factory.
  • Benchmark and replicate best practices—by comparing hotels or factories, managers can see where energy per unit is higher and act on the outliers.
  • Control dynamically—ventilation adjusted by room occupancy, predictive heating based on thermal inertia and weather, or automated oven scheduling reduce waste without hurting operations.

Concrete Examples

  • Hospitality sector: In a chain of ~100 hotels, installing 30–60 LoRaWAN® sensors per site revealed that simply switching off an oven outside meal times could cut pizza production costs by a factor of three to four. That insight translated into 15–20% energy savings across sites, with no impact on guest experience.
  • Packaging industry: By cross-analyzing OEE (Operational Equipment Efficiency) with energy consumption, companies discovered the exact cost in kWh per bottle filled and packaged. This not only reduced energy waste but also flagged process bottlenecks, improving both sustainability and throughput.
  • Smart buildings: Air circulation managed dynamically by LoRaWAN® air quality and CO₂ sensors ensures that rooms are ventilated only when occupied. The result: healthier workspaces for employees and lower HVAC bills.

 

Why LoRaWAN® Matters Here

Unlike wired systems that require heavy retrofits, LoRaWAN® delivers these insights at a fraction of the cost and time. Gateways cover entire buildings or campuses, and battery-powered sensors operate for years without maintenance. This means companies can scale fast, prove ROI quickly, and reinvest savings into deeper transformation.

The lesson: productivity and energy efficiency are not trade-offs anymore—they are two sides of the same coin.

Didier Lamy, H Experience

“Many companies know their bills, but they rarely know where the demand for energy is actually coming from. Once you measure and understand, you can act immediately—and savings appear almost overnight.“

Key Enablers and Technologies

Achieving both productivity and energy efficiency is not about choosing one “silver bullet.” It’s about combining connectivity, data, and control into an ecosystem that delivers actionable insights. The webinar highlighted several enablers—and LoRaWAN® connectivity, powered by Actility’s ThingPark platform, is at the center of this stack.

Wireless Sub-Metering with LoRaWAN®

The first step is understanding where and when energy is consumed. Instead of relying on a single monthly bill, companies can deploy 30–60 wireless sensors per building, as demonstrated in the hotel chain case.

  • Electricity, gas, water, air quality, occupancy, temperature—all can be monitored through LoRaWAN® sensors.
  • Installation is quick and low cost: no rewiring, no heavy retrofits, and one gateway can cover an entire building.
  • This creates a sub-metering map at the asset level (floors, rooms, machines), enabling granular visibility and comparisons.

IoT Analytics and Digital Twins

Collecting data is not enough. As the speakers emphasized, the value comes from making sense of the data.

  • Applications like H Experience build a digital twin of the asset, linking energy use to processes (e.g., energy per pizza, per hotel room-night, per manufactured bottle).
  • Cross-analysis with production KPIs like OEE (Operational Equipment Efficiency) identifies both energy waste and productivity bottlenecks.
  • Instead of “just dashboards,” managers get actionable KPIs tied to real processes.

Predictive and Dynamic Control

Once consumption is mapped, the next step is automation. With LoRaWAN® sensors feeding real-time data into control systems, companies can:

  • Optimize HVAC: Adjust ventilation by CO₂ levels and occupancy in each room.
  • Predictive heating: Algorithms learn the building’s thermal inertia to pre-heat only when needed, based on outside temperature and time of day.
  • Smart load shifting: Align equipment usage with off-peak tariffs, or synchronize hot water production with solar generation forecasts.

Renewable Integration and Storage

The hospitality and building examples showed how local renewable production (e.g., solar hot water) can be orchestrated through IoT.

  • LoRaWAN® sensors monitor usage and weather forecasts.
  • Algorithms adapt heating cycles to maximize self-consumption, cutting grid reliance and emissions.
  • These same principles scale to industrial microgrids and utility demand-response programs.

Scalability and Interoperability with Actility’s ThingPark

One of the biggest blockers in IoT projects is fragmentation—different vendors, different data formats.

  • Actility’s ThingPark Enterprise solves this by normalizing sensor data, ensuring interoperability across thousands of devices and vendors.
  • Enterprises can start small (a single site) and scale globally without re-architecting.
  • Because LoRaWAN® is standardized and backed by the LoRa Alliance®, companies also benefit from a massive ecosystem of compatible devices, supported by leaders like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft.

In short, the enabling technologies—sub-metering, digital twins, predictive control, renewables—all rely on one foundational layer: low-power, long-range connectivity at scale, which is exactly what LoRaWAN® and Actility provide.

Shmuel Solomon
Shmuel Solomon, Actility

“When it comes to scaling energy efficiency projects, wired and Wi-Fi solutions hit their limits. LoRaWAN provides long-range, low-power connectivity and an ecosystem that makes industrial deployments practical and cost-effective.“

Real-World Applications

The promise of aligning productivity and energy efficiency becomes compelling when seen in real deployments. The webinar showcased several examples across hospitality, industry, and building management—all enabled by LoRaWAN® connectivity through Actility’s ThingPark platform and the H Experience application layer.

Hospitality: Sub-Metering Across 100 Hotels

In one hotel chain, between 30 and 60 wireless sensors per site were installed to measure electricity, gas, and water consumption.

  • Benchmarking sites: By comparing hotels, managers could identify why one location consumed far more energy per room-night or per meal than another.
  • Quick savings: Something as simple as switching off an oven when not in use reduced energy per pizza by up to four times—transforming losses into profits.
  • Fast ROI: The deployment delivered 15–20% savings across the portfolio, with very short payback thanks to the low cost of LoRaWAN® sensors and gateways.

Industry: Energy per Unit of Production

A packaging company used LoRaWAN® sensors to monitor consumption at every step of its bottling line, then cross-analyzed with Operational Equipment Efficiency (OEE).

  • Energy per bottle became a key KPI, tracking electricity, gas, and water use.
  • By identifying high-consumption steps, the company both improved process efficiency and reduced overall energy intensity.
  • Benchmarking multiple factories highlighted best practices that could be replicated group-wide.

Smart Buildings: Dynamic Ventilation and Predictive Heating

Traditional building management systems (BMS) are rigid, with fixed schedules that don’t adapt to actual usage. With LoRaWAN® sensors:

  • Ventilation per room adjusts dynamically to occupancy and CO₂ levels—ensuring employee well-being without wasting energy in unused meeting rooms.
  • Temperature control is predictive: the system learns how long it takes to bring a building from 15°C at night to 19°C by morning, adjusting start times based on thermal inertia and weather forecasts.
  • This approach not only reduces energy but also increases comfort and concentration levels for occupants.

Renewable Integration: Smart Solar Self-Consumption

LoRaWAN® sensors also orchestrate renewable energy use.

  • In a residential or office building, hot water tanks powered by solar energy often heat unnecessarily overnight, even when the next day will be sunny.
  • By combining weather forecasts with consumption data, the system delays heating until solar energy is available—cutting nighttime grid demand and maximizing renewable self-consumption.

Public and Enterprise Networks

Beyond specific use cases, Actility enables both operators and enterprises to scale such solutions:

  • Operators like Orange provide LoRaWAN® public networks for nationwide coverage.
  • Enterprises like Air Liquide, Volvo, or Continental run private networks with ThingPark Enterprise, retaining full data control while connecting thousands of devices across sites.

These examples underline a critical point: wireless, battery-powered sensing with LoRaWAN® provides actionable data and control without heavy retrofits. Whether in hotels, factories, or office towers, the combination of Actility + H Experience enables measurable efficiency improvements while sustaining productivity.

Sector IoT & LoRaWAN® Use Case
Hospitality 30–60 sensors per hotel measuring electricity, gas, and water; benchmarking sites uncovered inefficiencies (e.g., ovens left on all day), delivering 15–20% energy savings
Industry Sub-metering along production lines; cross-analysis with OEE to calculate energy per bottle; identification of high-consumption steps improved both efficiency and output
Smart Buildings Dynamic ventilation by occupancy and CO₂ sensors; predictive heating based on building thermal inertia and weather forecasts, cutting HVAC costs while improving comfort
Renewables Solar hot-water optimization: delaying heating at night when sunny weather is forecast, maximizing renewable self-consumption and reducing grid dependency
Enterprise Networks Private LoRaWAN® networks (ThingPark Enterprise) deployed by companies like Volvo and Continental to scale IoT solutions securely across multiple sites
The Business Benefits

The webinar made one thing clear: aligning productivity with energy efficiency is not only a sustainability gesture—it delivers hard business value. With Actility’s LoRaWAN® connectivity and H Experience’s applications, organizations achieve measurable gains in four key areas.

Cost Savings and Fast ROI

  • Low-cost deployments: Sensors range between €80 and €200, gateways around €600, and licenses only a few euros per month. Compared to heavy retrofits (new insulation, HVAC replacement), the digital layer is inexpensive and minimally invasive.
  • Immediate impact: In the hotel chain case, simply adjusting processes (like oven usage) delivered 15–20% savings in months.
  • SaaS scalability: Most deployments run in SaaS mode, lowering upfront investment and allowing organizations to expand incrementally.

Operational Resilience and Risk Reduction

  • Energy price volatility: By measuring in real time and shifting loads to off-peak hours, companies protect themselves against rising and unpredictable costs.
  • Regulatory compliance: With frameworks like Decree Tertiaire and CSRD, auditable energy data is critical. LoRaWAN® sensors feeding into Actility’s ThingPark ensure reliable, standardized records.
  • Data sovereignty: Private networks allow enterprises to keep data on-premises if required, mitigating cybersecurity and compliance risks.

Competitive Advantage and Productivity Gains

  • Unit-level KPIs: Energy per bottle, per room, or per meal is more than a sustainability metric—it reveals inefficiencies that slow production. By fixing them, companies boost both output and margins.
  • Interoperability solved: ThingPark normalizes sensor data across vendors, removing IoT complexity and enabling businesses to scale without vendor lock-in.
  • Innovation edge: Once the network is deployed, the same LoRaWAN® infrastructure supports multiple applications—cold chain monitoring, predictive maintenance, leak detection—amortizing investments across use cases.

Brand Reputation and Stakeholder Trust

  • Customers: Visible energy savings (e.g., sustainable hotels) strengthen loyalty.
  • Employees: Smarter, healthier workplaces (dynamic ventilation, optimal comfort) improve well-being and engagement.
  • Investors: Reliable ESG data backed by IoT infrastructure demonstrates concrete progress, building credibility and easing access to capital.

In short, Actility + LoRaWAN® make the case for sustainable growth not just an ethical imperative but a profitable business strategy: lower costs, reduced risks, higher competitiveness, and stronger stakeholder relationships.

Business Benefit How It’s Achieved with IoT & LoRaWAN®
Cost Savings Low-cost wireless sensors and gateways deliver 15–20% energy savings within months
Regulatory Compliance Granular, auditable consumption data supports CSRD, Decree Tertiaire, and other frameworks
Productivity Gains KPIs like energy per unit reveal bottlenecks, aligning efficiency with higher throughput
Operational Resilience Load shifting, predictive heating, and renewables integration mitigate energy price volatility
Brand Reputation Sustainable operations improve customer loyalty, attract talent, and build investor confidence
Critical Success Factors

The technology stack—sensors, connectivity, analytics—creates the foundation for energy efficiency and productivity gains. But the webinar highlighted that true success depends on how organizations approach digital transformation. Several factors consistently determine whether projects deliver quick wins and scale over time.

Executive Leadership and Governance

Digital energy optimization cannot remain an IT or facility management side-project.

  • Strategic priority: Executives must frame energy efficiency as a driver of competitiveness, not just compliance.
  • Clear KPIs: Metrics such as energy per room-night, per bottle, or per meal provide tangible, trackable goals.
  • Budget alignment: Leaders need to ensure resources for scaling from pilot to enterprise-wide deployment.

Actionable Data, Not Just Dashboards

As stressed in the webinar, many IoT projects fail because they stop at “data collection.”

  • From data to value: Simply seeing a graph of consumption is not enough; insights must translate into specific actions—like instructing kitchen staff to switch off an oven, or automating ventilation schedules.
  • Digital twins: Modeling assets (factories, buildings, hotel rooms) allows managers to contextualize consumption and link it to processes, KPIs, and decisions.
  • Normalization: Actility’s ThingPark platform eliminates interoperability issues by standardizing sensor data, ensuring that the information is consistent and usable across applications.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

Energy optimization bridges multiple domains—operations, facilities, IT, sustainability.

  • Operations + energy teams: Jointly analyze data to uncover both productivity bottlenecks and efficiency opportunities.
  • IT + OT integration: Actility’s infrastructure bridges sensors and enterprise applications, ensuring smooth flows from factory floor to cloud analytics.
  • Employee empowerment: As seen in the hospitality example, frontline staff can identify and correct inefficient behaviors if given visibility and guidance.

Continuous Improvement and Scalability

The digital approach thrives on iteration.

  • Quick wins first: Sub-metering projects typically deliver savings within months, building confidence and budget for expansion.
  • Expand use cases: Once a LoRaWAN® network is in place, it can support new applications—HVAC optimization today, leak detection or predictive maintenance tomorrow.
  • Scalable infrastructure: Actility’s industrial-grade network server scales seamlessly from a single site to thousands, ensuring continuity as businesses grow.

Partnerships and Ecosystems

No company succeeds in isolation.

  • Technology partnerships: The Actility + H Experience collaboration shows how combining connectivity and application expertise accelerates adoption.
  • Ecosystem leverage: LoRaWAN® is supported by a rich global ecosystem of devices and partners, backed by the LoRa Alliance®.
  • Integration flexibility: Whether SaaS or on-premises, these solutions adapt to customer environments, enabling compliance, data sovereignty, and long-term reliability.
Didier Lamy, H Experience

“Collecting data for the sake of it has no value. The real challenge is to give meaning to data—linking it to actions, to behaviors, and to automated control that drives measurable impact.”

By following these success factors, organizations ensure that IoT-enabled energy optimization projects deliver measurable results and remain sustainable over time.

We demonstrate that productivity and energy efficiency are no longer trade-offs—they are synergies waiting to be unlocked. From hotels reducing energy per room-night, to factories tracking energy per bottle, to buildings dynamically adjusting ventilation and heating, the lesson is consistent: when you measure consumption accurately and connect it to operations, you uncover immediate savings and boost performance.

At the heart of these transformations is wireless, low-power IoT connectivity. LoRaWAN® networks, powered by Actility’s ThingPark, make it possible to deploy sensors at scale—indoors and outdoors, across buildings, factories, and utilities—without rewiring or prohibitive cost. Paired with analytics and applications like H Experience, organizations move quickly from “knowing their bills” to acting on granular, actionable insights.

The business case is compelling:

  • 15–20% energy savings in months, with minimal capex.
  • Fast ROI through low-cost sensors, SaaS-based applications, and scalable private or public networks.
  • Future-proof compliance with regulations like Decree Tertiaire and CSRD, supported by auditable data streams.
  • Stronger competitiveness and reputation, as companies demonstrate leadership in sustainable innovation.

As the speakers emphasized, the true value is not in dashboards or raw data, but in turning information into corrective and preventive actions. Actility and its partners provide the connectivity, interoperability, and scalability needed to ensure that these projects don’t remain pilots, but grow into enterprise-wide programs delivering sustainable growth.

The path forward is clear: companies that invest in IoT-enabled energy optimization today will not only protect their margins but also strengthen their resilience and position themselves as leaders in the transition to a sustainable economy. With Actility’s LoRaWAN® infrastructure and H Experience’s applications, organizations worldwide are already proving that sustainability and productivity can go hand in hand.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) - Productivity, Energy Efficiency, and LoRaWAN®

Most projects deliver measurable savings within months. As highlighted in the webinar, hotels equipped with LoRaWAN® sensors achieved 15–20% energy savings almost immediately, with very low upfront investment.

Unlike Wi-Fi, LoRaWAN® offers long-range coverage (up to 15 km outdoors), strong indoor penetration, and years of battery life for sensors. Compared to wired solutions, it cuts installation costs by around 30% and avoids disruptive retrofits.

Yes. LoRaWAN® sensors can complement existing infrastructure, and through Actility’s ThingPark platform, data can be collected from BMS, machines, or other systems via APIs. This enables a smooth integration without replacing existing assets.

Absolutely. LoRaWAN® is standardized by the LoRa Alliance® and offers end-to-end encryption. With ThingPark Enterprise, companies can deploy private networks on-premises or in the cloud, keeping full control of their data.

A LoRaWAN® infrastructure is multi-purpose. Once deployed, it can also support cold chain monitoring, water leak detection, predictive maintenance, asset tracking, indoor air quality monitoring, and more. One network, many applications.

  • Sensors: €80–€200 depending on type (temperature, air quality, electrical clamps).
  • Gateways: Around €600, typically covering an entire building.
    Licensing: Only a few euros per sensor per month for SaaS and network services.

This makes IoT-enabled energy optimization affordable, scalable, and fast to deploy

About Actility

Media contact : marketing@actility.com – https://www.actility.com/contact/ 

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