In order to make tenants more accountable for their energy consumption, some companies have started offering submetering solutions. These solutions based on IoT devices and applications have helped consumers to conserve energy and allow managers to better control costs. Among the companies looking to help customers in this field, Kron has been heavily invested to deliver the best devices and solutions on the market.

Kron was founded in Brazil in 1954 by Ericks Bedicks, son of Alfredo Bedicks — a Leto immigrant who fled the Bolshevik regime and who was the engineer responsible for the electrical area of Tsar Nicholas’s Winter Palace.  

Today, the company has a wide range of products, all of them related to the electricity sector, such as current and potential transformers, multimeters, energy consumption meters, and many others.

The Challenge 

Administrative companies that operate stores in shopping malls and shopping centers typically have some difficulties with power metering, those mostly being:

1. High costs related to the reading of meters, energy apportionment and analysis of reports.

2. Inconsistent measurement and collection for shopkeepers due to incorrect installations and reading errors.

3. Difficulty in making individual measurements and analyses available to retailers.

From the user and shopkeepers’ point of view, who are using cloud energy apportionment applications, there are some improvements that would increase the reliability of measurement systems:

1. The possibility to check the measurement of energy in real time and how much has already been consumed in that period of time

2. Transparency in apportionment, both in relation to consumption and in the amount charged by kW/h

The Solution

Studying trends and new technologies, Kron came across the term “Internet of Things,” where it noted the opportunity of cloud communication as a way to add value and technology to its meters. This technology brought great innovation to the access of energy consumption and data analysis information, maintaining Kron once again as a pioneer in the national market for power meters, implemented Ethernet communications, Wi-Fi, LoRaWANTM, CAT-M and NB-IoT.

With all of this potential, customers can choose the best connectivity solution while also taking into account their needs, application, location and type of environment where the meter will be installed.

With Kron’s solution in conjunction with TagoIO, energy and apportionment measurements are done remotely, using desktop or mobile applications, and can track consumption measurements and other electrical quantities, all in real time. This also includes solutions for automating invoice creation, slips generation, charting, analysis reporting, and incorrect installation or measurement analysis (through error codes and measurement values).

The Results

For the shopkeepers, it’s now possible for them to, in real time, check the energy consumption and analysis of loads; this allows them to evaluate, for example, when air conditioning and the lighting of the store were turned on or off. Another advantage here is the analysis of costs by certain periods of time, and full transparency when it comes to measurements, thus facilitating the control, analysis, and planning for your business.

These new meters facilitate the industry for automation and data generation, especially when it comes to the fourth industrial revolution, industry 4.0. Combined with a database and an automation of Artificial Intelligence (AI), the industry can create a consumer profile for each sector or machine within itself; enabling it to analyze its behaviors, operations, trends, and to predict problems, among other pieces of information relevant to the administration of that industry.

With the evolution and preparation of individuals industries having an impact on industry 4.0, Kron has been highly requested and sought after for their energy meters for IoT solutions.