Experimental characterization of service latency over Broadband Power Line in Medium Voltage grid

New needs of distribution system monitoring and automation have been raised in these years as the level of renewable energy sources penetration increases. Monitoring, protection, and synchronization applications needed by new Smart Grid systems mandate a capillary communication with primary and secondary substation, which cannot be implemented in time just with traditional media, such as Fiber Optics. Broadband Power Line over Medium Voltage (MV-BPL) grid could be a viable solution but a comprehensive characterization is still missing. The paper describes an experimental evaluation of service latency in a real MV-BPL design for the distribution grid management in Italy. The preliminary analysis states that 95% of the service requests are transferred on the network with a round-trip time lower than 120 ms even in the case of four hops.