Cem Güler  
Monitoring Device Product Engineer  
Aktif Mühendislik

PLC (Communication over Power Line):

Electricity, the source we can not afford to lack such as water and natural gas. It is a resource that is difficult to produce and expensive to consume. It must be monitored, measured and invoiced just like any other. One of the most important issues for such a responsibility is the method of monitoring.

Today, meters are not read by eye like old times. They are integrated to AMR (Automatic Reading System) systems and used with a lot of benefits. PLC communication is the most preferred communication system at last times in wired and wireless communication types.

PLC communication with a structure that does not need an extra infrastructure such as wired or wireless. The energy lines currently in operation are used as communication infrastructure. Additional signals are placed on the 50 Hz power lines at the kHz level. With the filtering technology, the signals meets in the collecting devices and is integrated into private networks.

PLC Communication Advantages:

Well, why use PLC communication. We can summarize the answer to this question under several headings.

a)Structure that does not require additional infrastructure change;

No additional communication infrastructure is needed for the system to be installed. Extra communication lines, such as the GSM infrastructure removed from requirements, the supply lines are enough to system design. Wiring or GSM operator costs are not paid. The system, which does not require the cost of intermediate hardware such as many converters, can be designed to work anywhere.

b)Communication problems are minimized;

The feeding lines drawn to the meters are taken with cables of at least 6 mm when looking at today’s infrastructures. Additional communication cables such as RS485 and Ethernet are used as 0.75 or 1 mm. The use of thick feed lines for communication instead of communication cables, where breakdown problems can be experienced a lot, is preventing such problems. There are no hardware failures such as the device server used for these additional wireline communication lines. There are no cases where special methods such as BUS connection are required.

One of the wireless communication types, RF communication, is mainly effected by external factors which are disturbing signals. The higher the yield and quality of the receiving and transmitting products used here will be, it will not be efficient as much as wired connection.

Wireless solutions where GSM / GPRS lines are used also have problems especially GSM coverage area and can not be used at every point.

As a result, additional hardware solutions used for communications can be failed or easily exposed to signal-blocking effects. The energy lines that have already been installed have eliminated many communication problems such as these.

c) PLC communication provides installation and maintenance easiness;

System solutions should be easy on the installation and continuing field work. Even if there is no device fault, long integration processes that can be experienced in the installation can cause problems. The energy meters used in the system during PLC communication are automatically defined by the central collector unit when connected to the line immediately. This eliminates the need for additional work such as communication settings and protocol integrations.

d) In addition to the central server system;

Data collector units are also recording. Additionally the time synchronization of meters can be done easily with these units.

In today’s world where smart network solutions are very important, PLC communication technology is getting stronger in our country. In particular, PLC communication, which is at the head of the technology that electric distribution companies stand for, can do remote monitoring as well as CB movement operations together with centralized software.

Technologies like PLC communication system should be used to capture the time.

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