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Utility Cuts Short BPL Trial
fatboy writes "The ARRL is reporting that Alliant Energy has called an early end to its broadband over power line (BPL) pilot project in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The "evaluation system" went live March 30, and plans were for it to remain active until August or September. Alliant shut it down June 25. Ongoing, unresolved HF interference from the system to retired engineer Jim Spencer, W0SR, and other amateurs prompted the ARRL to file a complaint to the FCC on Spencer's behalf demanding it be shut down."
I happen to live in the Cedar Rapids/Marion area and I didn't even know this was there. Why doesn't anyone tell us anything?! It would be an alternative to Mediacom and Qwest.
I'm incredibly glad to hear this. BPL has the potential to kill ham radio (and actually lot's of other HF radio services) as it uses HT powerlines that were not intended to carry HF signals and act as really excellent antenna (in fact the US Navy uses them to transmit extremly low frequency/long wavelength signlas to its submerged subs! So we know they work as antenna!)
I'm also glad the FCC isn't actually as big a patsy of the BPL industry as it first appeared. Cheers to the FCC and let's hope this is the first nail in the coffin of a truly bad idea.
As an aside: I hope this discourages the power industry muppets in the UK from trying the same thing.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
I remember something like this being tried about 5 years ago. It had the amateur radio community in an uproar. Something to do with street lights re-radiating the high-speed internet data in the form of electromagnetic energy. Apparently they did little to fix it. Shame; I wanted to be the first one on my block to have the other cable.
The last paragraph is quite telling actually:
That BPL means 'Broadband over Power Line', by the way.
I have to stop wasting so much time reading Slashdot. It's interfering with my crystal meth addiction.
One word: Fiber. Seriously, just string fiber optic lines along your power lines, you can easily mount repeaters and whatnot on the power towers and then do your last mile with good old cat5 cables (Ok...fine, last 328 feet) terminating in a repeater at the demarcation point.
I've never understood why they were so gung-ho about this stupid idea in the first place when most power grids already have multi-core fiber optic cable hidden inside the neutral wire.
What neutral wire? There's no neutral wire up on the poles. When you see three wires up there, that's one wire for each phase. In residential neighborhoods, you'll see a phase tapped off to feed a transformer. The output of the transformer feeds each house through two wires, each wire being a 120-volt leg, with 240 volts between them.
I haven't played around with the utility's stuff up on the poles, but I've replaced enough electrical services to note the absence of a neutral. There's no neutral in a earth-return system.
What neutral wire? ... its all the same with 3 phase. When you look at the 3 wires, you will find a forth ground line above them all that should take the volts of a lightning strike and it helps the real big circut breakers work right when there is a major problem with a tower. The ground line is what they hang the fiber off of and some places have a coax like shield thats the ground path around the fiber.
Neutral, ground
The problem is fiber doesn't like the wind action on poles and lots of that dark fiber is good for the distance between the poles and no longer.
"they'll be better off promoting a creative, alternative solution. "
Energis (?) in the UK already use Fibre optic cable wrapped around the HT cable for broadband signals. They made a wrig that travels down the HT cable and wraps (spirals) the fibre around it. Simple and easy.
So these guys could do the same without all the interference problems.
Here in Solvay, NY (just outside Syracuse) we are looking at broadband over power lines. The possible difference here is that the village of Solvay is served by its own power plant. One of the perks of living here is 3 cent a KwH electric service.
The link below leads to an article about the upcoming service:
link here
Note that they do not mention the issue of RFI in the article.
I admit that it is attractive as the speed is higher and the cost lower than my current DSL.
Me think analog good thing. Disaster happen. Say chemical plant go boom. People go quick!! But only, me say, maybe eight police in whole small town!!!! Amateur people trained in MARS unit (funny name, huh?) help evacuate people. Good thing!
Unfortunately, broadband over power lines isn't win-win if it means another form of communication is rendered useless. The FCC doesn't support an amateur radio service just because "we're the one's what love freedom!" Amateur radio operators routinely perform volunteer services in emergencies. The amateur service encourages a pool of people self-trained in communications equipment. It has social value and it is inappropriate to think of eliminating it as akin to the passing of the neanderthal.
See Alan Crosswell's site for more information on BPL interference in his area.
All it takes is one location to roll out BPL, and the HF band is affected world-wide.
I predict the following:
Before anyone says how heartless I am to those poor ham radio operators: I am one. I'm just a realist.
Can anyone actually point to skywave QRM from BPL? Or is all the intereference detected so far local only?
BTW, I find power lines locally interfering with AM broadcast mobile reception today, somehow we still live.
Well, if you want to get picky, the name Sprint did not come from an acronym as you said it did; rather, the name "Sprint" was chosen from an employee "name the company" contest in the late 1970s. It was the Southern Pacific Communications Company at the time, but the SP railroad sold it shortly afterwards.
Someone earlier noted that in the UK, Energis had trouble with their easements when they used power easements to run telecom. In the US this is not usually a problem for utilities, but it has been a problem on some railway easements. Railroads have been leasing space to telecom companies for years, but some of their own rights-of-way may not have allowed it. This has been rather messy in a few places, as some landowners had to be placated (paid off) when their lawyers figured out that they could turn the screws.
BPL is of course an awful idea, for technical reasons that others have pointed out. I suspect however that intentional interference is part of the design. Short-wave radio, while unpopular in the United States, is still a valued form of getting past the censors in places like China and Arabia. BPL is probably being geared up for export to those places, where it can finally do the job that hundreds of cold-war-era jammers could not do. A broadband shortwave jammer in every neighborhood? Used to feed filtered, government-sanctioned content? A tyrant's dream!
Bush and his cronies in the increasingly-concentrated media empires couldn't have similar ideas, of course....
Personal experience with power companies is that they don't care if they are causing interference.
They usually have one engineer/technician that works interference complaints.
Most cases are arching insulators.
They usually refuse to fix the cause until the line is taken down for routine maintenance even though the FCC rules demand harmful interferrence must cease immediately.
It really makes no difference if the persons being interferred with are hams or the government.
Harmful interference with a station in a licensed service must not occur and must cease immediately when notified.
This is not just US Law but is in several International Treaties.
IMHO -- Many of these power company "engineers" no longer come from a "ham" background and have a vested interest in seeing BPL work. Besides they are power and computer engineers not communications engineers.
This issue is easy to solve by sending the FCC listening truck out and documenting whether and how much interference BPL causes. This must have already happened for the FCC to start slapping fines on the power company.
Of course do the math - 10,000 per day the power company only needs 10,000 customers to make that up! Now when if the FCC will start throwing the CEO into jail at 6 months a violation maybe this stupid idea will be put to bed.
BTW the ARRL probably got involved because the power company tried to "stiff-arm" the hams.
Supra et Ultra