Examining power line communication on Egypt’s low voltage grid for AMR network

Electrical energy consumers are demanding better customer service, higher power quality, higher energy measurement accuracy and more timely data. Utility companies all over the world are being forced to find solutions giving greater information on the population´s power consumption. The Automatic Meter Reading system (AMR) is one of the ways in which utilities are go-getting to achieve these goals. Power lines are one of the communication mediums used in the AMR system. However, power lines are a hostile communication environment. This paper describes a prototype for AMR system using power lines showing performance and reliability tests. The measurements are carried out on a sample of Egypt´s low voltage network.