Broadband power line communications for the electricity supply industry

The world´s electricity companies and utilities are facing many challenges over the next decade. The primary aim and objective is to supply all the energy required by industry, residential homes and businesses but in the most energy efficient way and reducing the carbon emissions of the worlds environments. To achieve these goals communications to all parts of the electricity grid and into industrial companies and residential homes will require efficient communications that will be able to control devices by both switching them on and off remotely and in situ. To achieve this, power communications utilizing the low, medium and high electricity grid to communicate and control devices is clearly an efficient way to go forward. This presentation outlines the potential for this type of communication service together with a number of specific drawbacks but clearly identifies the potential for this type of communication service amongst others that are also available. The success and future of Broadband Power line communications is dependent on a number of key factors. These include primarily of establishing key parameters associated with the transmission and reception of the power line signal together with there measurements under a number of environments. These measurements provide the best insight into establishing the quality of such systems and how they will operate under the standards that are currently being evolved through the different standards bodies in the IEC, CISPR22, Cenelec and ETSI.