Chapter 4 - Power line communication technologies in smart grids

Abstract

The smart metering and monitoring are crucial processes of smart grid (SG) systems. Communication infrastructure of these processes are being widely researched due to the common applications of SG systems since the metering, monitoring and control operations are extensively utilized in industrial systems. In addition, metering and monitoring transactions should be enabled in both renewable energy plants and microgrids. Power line communication (PLC) systems are assumed as the most swiftly developed technologies within the SG scope since they offer notable cost efficiency by reducing the need for communication channel installation. This chapter firstly introduces fundamentals, background and applications of the PLC technologies in a logical way to facilitate the understanding. Later, the PLC technologies are classified according to the utilized frequency bands and all of them are explained in detail. Then, the characteristics of the power lines are introduced by considering noise and channel characteristics, electricity grids and regional differences, and features of utilized power cables in power grids. The electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) regulations are also presented after the recent regulations and standards (i.e., ITU-T G.hnem, G3-PLC, PRIME and IEEE 1901.2) are summarized. By the following, several metering and monitoring applications of the SG systems based on the PLC method are presented as case studies.