Nube is Spanish for “cloud,” and it’s pronounced “NEW-bay,” not, as this gringa reporter said as she opened her interview with Nube founder and co-CEO Chris Gnanakone, “Noob.” The correction was important, he said, because Nube has plans to evolve into a cloud-based services company that will work in a wide range of vertical markets. It is starting by providing vendors of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) in Mexico with an IoT-based system that tells them when customer’s LPG tanks need to be refilled. If widely adopted, this could greatly improve the logistical operations of refueling services, Gnanakone says, while also helping ensure their residential and commercial customers will have a reliable supply of fuel.
“No one in Mexico knows how much gas is their tank, and gas companies don’t know how much, either,” Gnanakone explains.
That’s because in most commercial buildings and in some residential buildings throughout Mexico, LPG tanks are located on the rooftops, which are often not easily or safely accessible to occupants. There are 12 million roof-mounted LPG tanks in the country, according to Gnanakone. (Some homes that lack roof-mounted tanks use small LPG cylinders for heating and cooking needs, and refills are purchased from vendors on the street.)
Residential customers sometimes put in standing orders for a refueling truck to come on the 15th or last day of the month, or every other month, he says, based on what they’ve needed in the past. But sometimes, homes run out of fuel and residents must go without any source of heat or cooking fuel until a refueling truck can be dispatched to their home. Businesses such as hospitals or restaurants, which consume a significant amount of fuel and are highly dependent on it, generally have their LPG tanks refilled once each week.
Nube, which is headquartered in Guadalajara, with an engineering, research and development office in Boulder, Colo., is currently running internal tests of its platform, which would allow gas companies to dispatch trucks to refill tanks based on a customer’s need, determined by the actual fuel levels inside the tanks. Nube worked with Sierra Wireless, a provider of embedded wireless devices and gateways, as well as connectivity services, to develop the Nube LPG tank level sensor and cellular communication module that is at the heart of the new offering.
The LPG tanks are already outfitted with analog fuel level sensors, which measure the magnetic field created by a device floating inside the tank to determine fill level. However, these analog sensors cannot be monitored remotely, since they are only connected to a display screen attached to the tank and are not designed to transmit their readings to the cloud. Nube will attach its device to those existing sensors. A converter inside the device turns that indicator’s analog output into a digital signal. The microcontroller inside the device also collects the minimum and maximum ambient temperature readings (using an integrated thermometer), since the most recent tank level reading. It uses these figures to correct for any expansion or contraction of the gas that might be skewing the level reading.
Once the Nube device determines the fuel level, which is expressed as a percentage full, it transmits this information, along with the battery’s current capacity, to the Sierra Wireless cloud service via an integrated GSM subscriber identity module (SIM) card. Nube will then access this cloud service to import the data into its cloud-based application. The device will send a tank level reading daily if attached to a commercial customer’s tank, or once per week if attached to a residential tank.
Gnanakone says the battery has an expected lifespan of five to seven years when sending daily readings.
Nube has also developed cloud-based software that collects the fuel tank data. Gas companies will be able to log in and view heat maps of their entire services areas, showing the locations of all tanks that are 20, 10 or 5 percent full. The software is also designed to help refueling companies improve their own gas-ordering processes, so that they can match their inventory on hand to the short-term needs of customers and be able to predict periods of high or low consumption, based on historical trends.
Customers will be able to view their tank levels at any time via a smartphone application that Nube will white-label and manage for them. They’ll be able to open the app to check their fuel levels at any time, as well as place an order for a refueling service whenever they choose. But when they initially download the applications, customers will also be able to opt in to a standing order, whereby a truck will be dispatched to refill the tank automatically whenever it reaches a predetermined level (such as 20, 10 or 5 percent full). In this way, the building occupant need not worry about running out of fuel or having to remember to order a refill.
Nube is one of the first Sierra Wireless customers to use its new IoT Acceleration platform, which is designed to help companies deploy connected products and services quickly and easily. “For years, customers have been asking us to help them better manage SIM subscriptions [for connected devices or products]” says Scott Waldrum, Sierra Wireless’s director of product marketing. Through the IoT Acceleration platform, he says “We give them everything they need to deliver data from the field to cloud-based services, as well as providing SIMs and connectivity” and subscription management.
Waldrum adds that the SIM card Sierra Wireless integrates into the device can switch among a variety of mobile network operators. “Unlike most roaming SIMs,” he explains, “this provides fixed wireless installation use cases like Nube [with] the best coverage model, as we operate across multiple MNOs [mobile network operators] within the country.”
Gnanakone says Nube has received written agreements from three Mexican gas companies—Global Gas, Gas Uno and Gas Imperial—which say they will purchase an undisclosed number of Nube devices and evaluate the cloud-based service if Nube can meet a price point of $35 per unit. He has verbal agreements from three other gas companies as well, he says.
In addition to the hardware costs, a gas company will pay a monthly licensing fee for use of the Nube software and application, as well as a small delivery service fee for refueling business customers.
Gnanakone expects that this subscription model will enable gas companies to see an immediate return on their investments through a more efficient process for dispatching refueling trucks, which will, in turn, reduce labor costs and fuel spending.
Senet, a company based on the East Coast of the United States, is selling an IoT-based system for automating residential LPG and oil tanks, but it found that establishing a cellular network to transmit the data from sensors attached to the tanks would have been cost-prohibitive. Instead, it uses a low-power wide area network (LPWAN) solution known as LoRa, developed by the California firm Semtech.