A New Coupling Solution for G3-PLC Employment in MV Smart Grids

Giovanni Artale, Antonio Cataliotti, Valentina Cosentino, Dario Di Cara, Riccardo Fiorelli, Salvatore Guaiana, Nicola Panzavecchia and Giovanni Tinè
Additional contact information
Giovanni Artale: Department of Engineering, Università degli Studi di Palermo, 90128 Palermo, Italy
Antonio Cataliotti: Department of Engineering, Università degli Studi di Palermo, 90128 Palermo, Italy
Valentina Cosentino: Department of Engineering, Università degli Studi di Palermo, 90128 Palermo, Italy
Dario Di Cara: Institute of Marine Engineering (INM), National Research Council (CNR), 90146 Palermo, Italy
Riccardo Fiorelli: STMicroelectronics S.r.l., 20864 Agrate, Italy
Salvatore Guaiana: Department of Engineering, Università degli Studi di Palermo, 90128 Palermo, Italy
Nicola Panzavecchia: Institute of Marine Engineering (INM), National Research Council (CNR), 90146 Palermo, Italy
Giovanni Tinè: Institute of Marine Engineering (INM), National Research Council (CNR), 90146 Palermo, Italy

Energies, 2019, vol. 12, issue 13, 1-23

Abstract: This paper proposes a new coupling solution for transmitting narrowband multicarrier power line communication (PLC) signals over medium voltage (MV) power lines. The proposed system is based on an innovative PLC coupling principle, patented by the authors, which exploits the capacitive divider embedded in voltage detecting systems (VDS) already installed inside the MV switchboard. Thus, no dedicated couplers have to be installed and no switchboard modifications or energy interruptions are needed. This allows a significant cost reduction of MV PLC implementation. A first prototype of the proposed coupling system was presented in previous papers: it had a 15 kHz bandwidth useful to couple single carrier PSK modulated PLC signals with a center frequency from 50–200 kHz. In this paper, a new prototype is developed with a larger bandwidth, up to 164 kHz, thus allowing to couple multicarrier G3-PLC signals using orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) digital modulation. This modulation ensures a more robust communication even in harsh power line channels. In the paper, the new coupling system design is described in detail. A new procedure is presented for tuning the coupling system parameters at first installation in a generic MV switchboard. Finally, laboratory and in-field experimental test results are reported and discussed. The coupling performances are evaluated measuring the throughput and success rate in the case of both 18 and 36 subcarriers, in one of the different tone masks standardized for the FCC-above CENELEC band (that is, from 154.6875–487.5 kHz). The experimental results show an efficient behavior of the proposed coupler allowing a two-way communication of G3-PLC OFDM signals on MV networks.

Keywords: power system communication; power system measurements; smart grids; communication system performance; narrow band power line communication; ICT infrastructure for smart grid (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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