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A plc-based electrical energy consumption management system. preliminary

field test results

Article · January 2003

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Petros Dokopoulos Dimitrios Tampakis

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 7th International Symposium on Power-Line Communications and Its Applications
Kyoto, Japan, March 26-28, 2003
Session A1: Field Trials

A PLC-Based Electrical Energy Consumption Management System.

Preliminary Field Test Results.
B. Nilsson*, P. Dokopoulos**, G. Papagiannis**, D. Tampakis**, N. Lettas**,
G. Bianconi***, G. Fabozzi***
* Industrial Metrology and Optics **Power Systems Lab ***FAGREL s.l.r.
Dept. of Production Engineering Dept. of Electrical & Computer Via Fausto Coppi, 4
KTH Royal Institute of Technology Engineering 23879 Verderio inf.(LC)
S-100 44 Stockholm /Sweden Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Italy
Phone: + 46 8 790 7498 54124, Thessaloniki / Greece Phone: +39039590111
e-mail: brunon@iip.kth.se Phone: +302310 996322 Fax:+390395901140
Fax : +302310 996321 e-mail: fagrel@fagrel.com
e-mail: petros.dokopoulos@auth.gr

Abstract obtained by field tests in Italy and in Greece and by

The paper presents the research project titled 'An
Innovative Energy Consumption Management System
(ECMS) based on a Punctual Electrical Control Device',
which is funded by the European Commission DG XII,
under the 'Energy, Environment and Sustainable
Development’ RTD Action. The project aims at the rational
use of electric energy. ECMS is addressed to public and
private users of electric energy and can be used to limit
waste energy and to manage peak loads. The technical
approach is the punctual control of each electrical power
supply point through an intelligent switch called Power
Management Switch (PMS). The apparatus to be controlled
is equipped with PMS, which is coupled to the power
network, which is also used as the physical communication
link. This narrow band PLC application uses frequency
bands from 95 kHz to 148.5 kHz. The PLC device coupler,
modem, microprocessor, and peripherals are a proprietary
design utilizing a recent PLC-transceiver chip launched by
ST Microelectronics.
The PMS devices can be remotely controlled by user
terminal equipment through Internet or through a Virtual
Private Network (VPN). Therefore proper servers are
used to establish a communication link between PLC
devices and the external terminal equipment, utilizing any
applicable communication technique i.e. wireless, optical
etc.
The project includes the design and implementation of
an ECMS in three pilot installations used for street lighting
in Italy, Greece and Romania. By collecting consumption
data the overall performance of the system will be
evaluated.
This paper also presents first results out of measurements
concerning signal and data transmission characteristics
experimental laboratory tests of transmission channels, with
frequencies 100-145 kHz. Field and laboratory test where
made in 5 wire 3 phase power cables.
1. Introduction
The use of power line as a carrier for signal transmission
goes back to the early 1950, where signals of 100-1200 Hz
were transmitted over the power lines for ripple control.
Power line communication (PLC) evolved rapidly during
the last years, as the need for more local access
infrastructure was growing [1], [2]. Advanced modulation
techniques were used allowing high frequency data
transmission over the power line [3]. Besides high data
transmission, PLC can be applied to a whole class of energy
control services. The use of PLC to control electrical loads
has the advantage that the physical transmission medium for
control signaling and for the power transmission is the
same. Also signaling is possible even if the electrical load is
off. Therefore it is of great interest to investigate the control
of electrical loads in the distribution network by using PLC.
Signaling over power lines must comply with the
CENELEC norm EN 50065- 1 [4], where signal levels up to
122 dBµV are permitted in the band of 3-148.5 kHz. For
higher frequencies the signal level is restricted to 60 dBµV.
In the majority of the control cases only the on-off control
of a load and the transmission of its state is necessary, while
the sampling time of the control does not need to be faster
than a few 10ths of seconds. Therefore the frequency band
of 3-148.5 kHz is most suitable. From this band, the 3-
95 kHz range is reserved for energy suppliers. The
CENELEC B and D bands with frequency ranges between
95 – 125 kHz and 140 – 148,5 kHz respectively are
available for consumers.

10
 However there are major issues to be looked upon.
Primarily the attenuation of transmitting system is of
interest but also the interference. By using a commercially
available PLC chip ST7538 of ST Microelectronics, which
is robust enough to tolerate high level of interfering signals
and permits operation at different carrier frequencies,
interference problems were minimized . Therefore the major
part of the effort is put into the investigation of the channel
attenuation and noise.
The physical mean for the transmission is rather
complicated, a five wire low voltage PVC cable of the type
J1VV. The transmitter is connected between the phase and
neutral wires, while the other wires are coupled inductively
and capacitively to the active wires. While cross-talking
does not appear to be harmful, the electrical loads connected
either directly or by a short cable to the active line seem to
connections are also applicable. CLU has all the intelligence
needed to control and serve the LAN attached to it.
CLU keeps historical data, it offers optimization
platforms for optimal control, evaluates messages, produces
reports, etc.
For more extended systems covering a large
geographical area, the use of public transmission services
are needed e.g. ADSL, Internet. Front End Services are
foreseen to manage the needs of the system and CLU. User
Terminals UTEs and Supervisor Terminal can be connected
to the system using public transmission services.
Front end services PMS
rooting, System,
RDBMS
CMU

generate the major problems in signal transmission. These caller

power loads may completely short-circuit the transmitting UTE User Transmission Services
Terminal
signal. Also the power loads vary statistically during the called
Internet Wire
CMU
PMS

by CMU, CLU
time. So the problem becomes more complicated. Supervisor
GPRS Wireless Areas of
reliable
In the next chapters a short reference to the design of STE
Terminal GSM Fiber optic PLC

ECMS will be made followed by results obtained by field VPN P-MP 802.11 PMS
and laboratory investigations of the attenuation of signals in CMU

the physical transmission channel.

Local Control, DB,
CLU
Local Image
2. The Layout Of ECMS of FES and System

All communications are permanently open except UTE

ECMS has two entities of main players a) the user and Equipment is connected to same VPN except UTE

b) the loads to be managed by him. Therefore ECMS needs

user terminal equipment (UTE) and smart load terminals
called in our case Power Management Switches (PMS). As
far as the geographical distance between the UTE and PMS
is increased then it is to be considered as Wide Area
Network (WAN). Network system management and
security issues led to the design shown in Fig. 1, which
includes except UTE and PMS, the equipment necessary to
complete the system. Loads to be controlled by their PMS,
which belong to one secondary of a power transformer,
constitute a LAN. PMS within this LAN communicate via
PLC with a unit called Control Management Unit (CMU).
Depending on PLC transmission capabilities more than one
CMU may be needed. Each CMU has within its
transmission range area many PMS. CMU is used for
rooting requests from outside region to the proper PMS and
vice versa. It has also build-in intelligence to be used as a
server for the requirements of the system concerning the
LAN attached to it and the connection to outside network.
CMUs belonging to different secondaries of power
transformers are connected to a Control Unit (CLU), which
can be accessed by the user either directly or remotely via
other commercially available services. For the connection
between CLU and CMU public services offered such as
GPRS, GSM telephony can be used. Direct fiber optic,
copper links or wireless Ethernet protocol 802.11b
Figure 1: Energy Control Management System (ECMS)
3. The Main Components Of The System
The majority of the hardware is commercially available.
The equipment proprietary to this project is the PMS and
CMU which will be briefly described in the next paragraphs
3.1 Power Management Switch (PMS)
PMS comprises following modules:
1. A PLC-modem in a chip.
2. Couplers for connection of the transceiver to the
network.
3. Application microprocessor.
4. Digital and analog I/Os.
5. A power relay 10 A, AC1 230/400 V for switching
loads.
6. A power supply pack for with additional surge
protection.
The PLC chip ST7536 is a recent development of ST
Microelectronics with an FSK-Transceiver. It can work
within a range of 8 frequencies from 60 to 132.5 kHz,

11
resulting to a transmission rate from 600 to 2400 Baud. It is
compliant to the EN 50065 [4].
PMS is activated satisfying requests from the
corresponding CMU. These requests concern ON-OFF
commands, confirmation of its logical state and the
transmission of measurements, flags, messages and
warnings concerning a specific load. PMS have a unique
ECMS system specific or IP address and once plugged into
the power line are self installed, i.e. it is a ‘plug and play’
device.

3.2 The Command Unit (CMU)

The Command Unit has the same hardware as a PMS

but it is enhanced by two components a) an embedded PC
and b) a communication module. Also a more powerful
power supply is used.
Figure 2: Communication channel (Site Krya Vrysi -
The embedded PC has communication ports for on-site
Greece)
testing and for Ethernet connection. It satisfies following
needs of the system:
In the case of a line without side branches and loads
- Network management in PLC LAN e.g. polling of PMS,
connected, the attenuation along the line is negligible. In a
rooting a command coming from the corresponding CLU.
matched line the signal attenuation along the line would be
- Connection to the remote control unit CLU.
negligible even at a distance of several km. Branches and/or
- Installation of PMS, plug and play procedure.
loads along the lines may considerably influence the
- Keeps recent history data.
transmission. The worst cases found are cases of consumer
- Runs software needed to control each PMS.
apparatus or lamps connected to the line containing
In case there are many CMUs in a PLC – LAN
capacitors or rectifier bridges, e.g. an oscilloscope on the
(secondary of power transformer) the CMUs have to
field tests acted as a short circuit when connected to the
coordinate, through proper communication, their tasks
line. The same happened when a capacitor compensated
concerning the CMU-PLC cooperation.
sodium lamp was connected to the line.
4. Investigations On The Communication Channel

The efficient operation of the physical PLC

communication is a major necessary condition for the
system. Therefore significant part of the effort is spent in
communication tests and analysis. The test were made in the
two pilot fields in Italy and in Greece, while laboratory tests
performed in two universities KTH Royal Institute of
Technology in Stockholm, Sweden and Aristotle University
of Thessaloniki in Greece but also in the premises of project
leader Fagrel Co in Verderio Italy.
The communication channel has in general a star
configuration (Fig.2). There are five insulated copper wires
and the ground, which also participates in the transmission
of the signal. The signal source is connected across a phase
and the neutral conductor (Fig. 3). The power cable is of the Figure 3: Transmission channel (Site Krya Vrysi - Greece)
type J1VV, three phase, 5 wire, cable. The cross section of
all conductors varies from 10 to 2.5 mm2 according to the In order to increase the impedance of the load at the
load rated power. signal frequency when necessary and to avoid unacceptable
attenuation, a low pass filter with negligible impedance at
50 Hz and an impedance of the order of magnitude of some
tens of Ohm at 100 kHz had to be used, to eliminate the
impact of the load on signal transmission.

12
4.1 Low pass filter an impressed high frequency current across a choke when
the load current (50 Hz current) is 8 A, resulting in
In cases where the load impedance at the signal 32 Aturns.
frequency is in the range of 0 to 1 Ohm, one has to increase
the impedance selectively as to the frequency of
transmission. An efficient solution to this is to use a choke Ohmic load, 8A a.c.
made of a ring core e.g. 30-50 mm diameter with a few
turns (1-4) of the power line wire. Ring cores made of
ferrites or iron powder have been successfully used. A 30 15
capacitor in parallel to the choke may increase the 10
impedance at one resonance frequency. But since there are 20 5
several frequencies available for PLC in the chip used, 0

Load current [A]

L [µH]
working with resonance is not always possible. 10 -5
To test the performance of ferrite chokes under various -10
loading conditions the test device of Fig. 4 was used. A 0 -15
capacitor of 20 µF was connected in parallel with variable 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18
resistive and inductive loads while a sinus signal of 1V rms time [ms]
at 125 kHz was transmitted in the power line.

Figure 5b: Inductance for a toroidal core

The choke seems to work sufficiently well for low

currents and saturates for load currents of about 2 A as
shown in Figs 5a and 5b. By proper modeling of core size,
permeability and number of turns, chokes having reactance
of some ten Ohm can be easily realized even for high load
currents. Fig. 5b shows the inductance for a toroidal core
with a size of 30x20 mm, as a function of time. The 50 Hz
load current with rms value of 8 A for a purely resistive
load is also shown in the same diagram. Due to non-linear
permeability high frequency inductance and therefore
voltage variations occur at the times when the 50 Hz load
current is near zero.
Figure 4. Experimental set-up for testing ferrite choke
performance.

Ohmic load, 8A a.c. Capacitive 20µF-Variable Ohmic load

600

0,6 500
Vac rms [mV]

400
0,3
300
0,0
V coil [V]

200
-0,3
100

-0,6 0
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 0 5 10 15 20

time [ms] Load Current [A]

no ferrite with ferrite

Figure 5a: Voltage drop across a toroidal core

Figure 6. Signal level at receiver with and without ferrite
Ferrites or iron powder cores can be operated efficiently choke. Transmission level 1 V rms, 125 kHz.
up to saturation. Saturation occurs if the local current
exceeds a limiting value. Fig. 5a shows the voltage drop for

13
 The signal level at the receiver is shown in Fig. 6 with
and without the ferrite choke. It can be seen that even when
the ferrite choke has reached saturation there is a significant
improvement in the signal level.
4.2 Tests in Greece
Measurements where made in the pilot installation site
of Krya Vrisi, Macedonia, Greece (Fig. 2). The power
transformer feeds a line powering 48 sodium lamps of
250 W each. A sinusoidal signal source was connected via
couplers at different points of the line, and the response was
measured along the power line. Activated and non-activated
lines (cross-talk) were measured using a receiver connected
via couplers to all phases of the power line.
1 E+03
Voltage (rms) [mV]
1 E+02
1 E+01
1 E+00
0 100 200 300
Distance [m]
With ferrite inductance 30µH at phase a
Without ferrite at phase a
Cross-talk at phase b
Cross-talk at phase c
Figure 7: Voltages across active (a) and non-active phases
(b, c) when a sinusoidal signal source is connected at the
beginning of the power line with f=125 kHz. Noise was
nearly 2 mV.
It can be seen that cross-talk is significant. At the end of
the line it is almost equal to the active line voltage (Fig. 7).
Cross-talk across line c is lower because a consumer was
connected at the beginning of the line. The signal at 250 m
is increased by a factor of two (3 dB) by using an
inductance of 30 µΗ in the line, which feeds the load.
Tests continued with the same arrangement but a 8 bit
string was transmitted using a PLC modem. The string was
produced by a random generator at the beginning of the test
line. The receiver was also a PLC modem equipped with an
error detector, which compared received and transmitted
signals. The measured points were at 250 and 500 m. The
results were encouraging, since even in cross-talk mode
there was no error to detect using proper ferrite chokes.
5. Conclusions
An Electrical Energy Consumption Management
System (ECMS) based on PLC, which is developed by a
research project funded by the European Community is
presented in this paper. The ECMS is based on an
intelligent punctual switching device, the Power
Management Switch (PMS). It has a flexible design
allowing its implementation in different energy
management applications.
For the power line communication a recently launched
PLC chip with an FSK transceiver from ST
Microelectronics, operating in CENELEC Bands B and C
is used.
The research project includes the implementation of
ECMS in 3 different street lighting pilot installations for
evaluation purposes. Preliminary tests concerning analog
and digital signal transmission in the field sites are
presented.
Results show the strong influence of loads, especially
compensation capacitors in signal attenuation. High level
cross-talk was also recorded, due to phase and earth
coupling, but with no significant effect on signal
transmission.
The use of toroid ferrites as low-pass filters on loads
400 500 can greatly improve the channel characteristics. Their
installation is easy when integrated in the PMS control
devices, which are connected between the power line and
the electric load.
Acknowledgments
The funding of this research work under the NNE5-
2001-00247 project contract by the European Community is
greatly acknowledged by the authors. The authors are solely
responsible for the results presented in this paper, which do
not represent the opinion of the Community. The
Community is not responsible for any use of this data.
References
[1] J. Newbury :' Efficient Communication Services
Using the Low-Voltage Distribution Line', Paper
0-7803-7322-7/02, presented at 2002 PES Winter
Meeting, New York, 2002
[2] H. Akkermans, D. Healey, H. Ottosson: ’The
Transmission of Data over the Electric Power
Lines’, Rept to European Commission Task
contract Nr. 116503, June 1998.
[3] K. Dostert : ‘Power line communications’,
Prentice-Hall Inc, 2001.
14
 [4] EN 50065-1: Signaling on Low Voltage
Electrical Installations in the frequency range 3
kHz to 148.5

15

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