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Electric Company Using Power Lines for Data

Posted by timothy on from the different-priorties-and-agendas dept.

Snags writes: "The local electric company PPL Utilities is testing a system to send electricity usage readings back to the company over its own power lines. According to a local newspaper article, they are using the TWACS system made by DSCI. I'm just hoping this doesn't interfere with other ideas for sending data over power lines."

5 of 164 comments (clear)

  1. Not a new idea by MouseR · · Score: 5, Informative

    HydroQuebec, in the provinde of Quebec (duh!) tried this a few years ago (circa '97).

    At the time, there were a number of obstacles that made this technology unworkable. If I remember correctly it had something to do with electromagnetic field sensitivity. The earth's EM and solar flares made the whole system too error prone, at the time.

    This brings up another memory. A company, 10 years ago, had a cheap office wiring system that used the ground outlet as a network transport. With their adapter, any machine plugged (quite literally) was on the same network.

    What made that idea (and company, I think) fold was the lack of security. Anyone could connect to your house's power outlet and get connected. Furthermore, there were no filtering devices that served as "firewall" between your house and the external power grid.

  2. BPS by Random+Feature · · Score: 5, Informative

    TWACS currently reads at 300bps. There's technology out there that will up that, but it isn't going to get anywhere near what's needed for a decent Internet connection anytime soon.

    My husband has been working with DCSI for about 2 years on the system in NE WI and there have been a few issues with interference, but not with homes and shit. The pulses aren't strong enough to interfere with normal shit, though there was one incident of a substation - which sends time synch pulses out to individual meters - setting off the railroad crossing alarms every 15 minutes.

    It's a better solution than using RF to transmit the readings back to the sub - most of those are using 900MHz to transmi and you can imagine what kind of problems THAT causes.

    --
    I don't have a solution, but I certainly admire the problem.
  3. One phrase - Return on Investment by sphealey · · Score: 5, Informative
    A few years ago I was working for a large energy utility. One of our competitors (different form of energy) went hell-bent-for-leather into wireless/remote meter reading. Cost per house: $300. Our cost to read meters via shoeleather: $5/meter/year, dog bites, workmans comp, and credits for misreads included. Simple payback on a $300 investment: 60 years.

    Our competitor got their hands slapped pretty bad by the public utility commission for that one and had to eat the entire investment. There was just no justification for such fancy toys to handle such a low-tech task.

    sPh

  4. Been there, done that... by Zocalo · · Score: 5, Informative
    The company I work for tried this in the UK some time ago for Internet access. It worked, but the big problem was with noise - there were just so many unexplained/untraceable bits of kit fritzing with the signal. Ultimately the signal is going to pass through one or more substations and 33kV or even 133kV AC is *noisy*, especially when some of the kit is getting on for half a century and more old.

    We canned the idea for Internet, but this application sounds ideal; low bandwidth, low contention (presumably), and if it goes wrong, you can always send the legacy meter readers around in a van... Or you could upgrade all your kit, I wonder which one they'll opt for...

    --
    UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
  5. Turtle Meters by shagan · · Score: 5, Informative

    I was outside the house the other day and noticed that my electric coop had installed a new meter. Upon closer inspection I noticed a little red light on the meter. Curiousity was peaked so I called up a friend of my that works for the coop and he went into a long explaination about these new meters they are rolling out. He called them Turtle meters and a quick net search turned up http://www.turtletech.com/Products-Sales/standardt urtle.htm

    To quote their website

    It monitors kilowatt-hours and records peak and minimum demand. The data is time-stamped and is continuously transmitted across the utility's own power lines. As long as the meter has power, the Turtle transmitter can provide a count of short outages (blinks) and establish whether the transmitter is in power fail.
    The Standard Turtle transmitter can be programmed to return one of eight different data transmission options. The time needed to transmit a complete packet varies from 13.9 to 27.2 hours depending on the amount of data being transmitted.

    Which falls in line with my friend telling me that it can take a day to get a reading because they are using a super low frequency. So yeah, they can remotely read meters. But they have definite problems with lightning. My friend spends a lot of his time in the summer replacing the Turtle units in the meters because they fry very easily he says. But they are cheap enough that it is still cheaper than sending a meter reader to all the houses.

    Hunt says they've been doing this since 1995, so its not new, but few people have seen it because it has taken a while to get them out.