Electric Company Using Power Lines for Data

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."

Comments

Higher speed for big cities

[Evanrude]

This would be a great way to bring high speed Internet connections to cities with large populations. By high speed I mean higher speed than current Cable/DSL connections. This would take us a step closer to being able to pipe audio/tv signals over the Internet.

In Ohio, better yet...

[CDWert]

In ohio, they are doing this in several place,

In a small town (where I work) they have pretty progrewssive ideas on power and communications,

First they have community power, almost 1/2 the cost of Ohio Edison in the next town over. Second is community cable, once again much cheaper, third is cable internet access, $20 a month compared to Time Warners, which you can still get here,

NOW about a year ago Wadsworth put FIBER to every home in wadsworth, long term plans include long distance. AND the ability to selcetivly shut down electical stuff on peak demand, (just your air conditioner, etc) to avoid brownout, because of the above reasons , and one of the best public school systems in the country, population is exploding.

Wadsworth is a great town and I lived there during my high school years, BUT If i lived here again an axe and cutters would hit that fiber so fast it'd make your head spin. Shutting down services on your panel selectivly MY ASS.

Re:In Ohio, better yet...

[duffbeer703]

What the hell are you talking about?

Utility rates have soared because deregulation allowed companies like Enron to purchase stable utility companies and run them into the ground.

I'll take heavily regulated or co-op utilities any day.

Network over the powerlines: not going to happen

[zaqattack911]

Basically it's very unlikely you'll see internet over the powerlines in the near future.

I read in this article (Wired magazine... not on the web), the total corporate history and research of this project idea.
Basically, big ass companies like AT&T etc.. did a lot of testing and decided that it was just too expensive to offer net over the powerlines. The main problem was that although one could effectively transmit data over the powerline.. once it hits a transformer the data is lost, and the only solution that 3 big companies could come up with was a device installed on each transformer to carry the signal, which is completely uneconomical and defeats the whole purpose of using the existing powergrid.

There is even a big scandal with another company that claimed they could overcome this problem.. and it turned out to be a total fake, and lawsuits galore occured.

Of course there is no problem with using the powerlines in your house to network... so Rock on Lan parties!

Incompatible with X-10?

[Black Perl]

The communication uses the zero crossings of the 60Hz waveform--same as X-10. Last thing I'd want is my lights turning on and off when they do meter readings.

Radio

[drwho]

The high speed data over mains, as they are testing in the netherlands, has been shown to create massive disruption to radio services. It would take a real lot of money to bribe (lobby) the FCC/congress to allow this in the US, money which would be hard to raise considering the dismal state of the telecom industry.

The service indicated here seems appropriate for telemetry. I wonder if they have accounted for security in control situations though. It may be too easy for someone to forge a packet. Still, at 300 baud (or what that bps?) its interference problems maybe be far less.