Power Line Communication

xterm

Anyone tested such devices before? Are there any in lebanon?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_line_communication

nuclearcat

I did. Inside apartment, if wiring is good - it works fine on short distances.
Some kind of home appliances can make interference and speed will be very low on time when they are working, example: coffee grinder.

rolf

I think this is an awesome topic. AFAIK power companies use such technology for sending control and monitoring signals across their network. It is not widespread for end use, I wonder why. The power grid not being prepared for such technology is one possible reason, electrocution danger another one... maybe there are other reasons, maybe even political reasons.
I don't think it can compete with fiber optic anyway, but it sounds like a very valid technology for the future, with the advent of internet connectivity for small or simple devices.

mesa177

If you mean this:

then I would suggest you buy it via ebay, it's actually been around for quite some time now. I highly doubt any of the local electronics shops have any, but it doesn't hurt to ask.

Raficoo

hmm I'm a bit confused, what does PLC actually do, transmit data between devices by electricity?(like Ethernet?)

xterm

Mesa, that's exactly what I mean.

Raficoo, yes.

Xsever

Given my experience in power generation and distribution, the buggest hurdle is the high voltage which makes working on these lines "a big deal". Not any technician will be able to work on such lines. High voltage, fall protection, and many other certificates are needed.

As for reliability, I think it is as reliable as it can be (taking Canada as an example and not Lebanon for sure). The grid here is very stable, well-maintained, and controller 24-7 manually and automatically. It is the best medium to use.

The major milestone for PLC is the smart grid, where the grid will benefit immensely from the communication provided. Utilities in this case will be able to use the same lines to communicate with transformers, switches, feeders, etc... instead of using an additional fiber optic network to do the talking.

yasamoka

rolf wroteI think this is an awesome topic. AFAIK power companies use such technology for sending control and monitoring signals across their network. It is not widespread for end use, I wonder why. The power grid not being prepared for such technology is one possible reason, electrocution danger another one... maybe there are other reasons, maybe even political reasons.
I don't think it can compete with fiber optic anyway, but it sounds like a very valid technology for the future, with the advent of internet connectivity for small or simple devices.

No. It's a concept that's slow, sluggish, and annoying, and expensive. It's dead with the advent of fast Wireless N and cheap wireless implementations. What made it die even more is fiber optics and the fast that you can have gigabit networks in your home for cheap prices. It's usually rated at a max of 200mbps (megabits), but good luck achieving 60 megabits. That's 7.5MB/s. Even 100 mbps ethernets beats it.

practo

I recently took a grad course in Power System State Estimation which goes into a lot of detail about using PLCs for reading and recording things like voltage, frequency and lots of other stuff at different nodes in the grid.

All I remember is that they are great to use but freaking suck to understand and design. I got a C+ in the course :(

xterm

I went for the Wireless Access Point, you may continue discussing this :-)

Xsever

yasamoka wroteNo. It's a concept that's slow, sluggish, and annoying, and expensive. It's dead with the advent of fast Wireless N and cheap wireless implementations.

I can confirm this since where I worked, we used wireless and RF networks to communicate with our smart meters. Each house with a smart meter can be pinged, data can be fetched from it, and control signals can be sent to it very reliably.

The company went with wireless and RF since the city already had the infrastructure (towers) for it. Going with PLC was going to be very costly and not as reliable.

BashLogic

ive used both, i have used the adapters in our previous flat and it was ok, performance wise, it was not that great. it is very dependent on the quality of the copper and how the cables are connected, shielded and their age. if you have fuses, those will degrade the connection. it is good for basic connections but i would not run media streams across it. sometimes it would just lag for several seconds causing a timeout and having to reinitiate the large file transfer :P. i was not able make use of these in our current flat. I had to give up and just extend an ethernet cable across the flat. the connection bandwidth was very low and would randomly disconnect especially during the transfer of large files. having a fuse box in between did not help at all. i even tried to change the fuse but it went from bad to worse.

as for the infrastructure version, i tried it out about 7 years ago when it was a big hype. back then, there were several companies that were planing of expanding and getting a market share but all in vain. the technology was not stable and even for modern european companies, the copper quality had degraded to a point that they were not able to get stable high bandwidth connection (having same issues as what i described above). as to what i am aware, the industry has given up on further developing that technology for broadband usage.

the technology is being further developed for basic low bandwidth and low transmition usage. just as Rolf mentioned as an example, the power companies are using it for monitoring and remote reading. the horrific part to it that lost of what is deployed (old setups), are not encrypted and are prone to malicious intent. due to this fact, the power companies have commenced renewing that deployment and extending it to the point as where in the future, you will not have to local power guy come and read your hacked power consumption meter. that information will be encrypted and transmitted automatically the power company cutting on staffing and infrastructure costs.