Electric Company Using Power Lines for Data 164
Snags writes: "The local electric company PPL Utilities is testing a system to send electricity usage readings back to the company over its own power lines. According to a local newspaper article, they are using the TWACS system made by DSCI. I'm just hoping this doesn't interfere with other ideas for sending data over power lines."
Hack your utility bill! (Score:5, Funny)
And how about a DDOS attack? Do I have to firewall off my toaster now?
Re:Hack your utility bill! (Score:4, Funny)
Sign me up!
Either that, or this system may be inadvertently bridging X-10 signals, so we get to watch our neighbors X-10 cameras. Hmm... choices.
Re:Hack your utility bill! (Score:3, Funny)
Hell, that might work for you if you live next to a model or movie star. I live next to a slaughterhouse and proctologist. Where does that leave me?
Re:Hack your utility bill! (Score:2)
>
> Hell, that might work for you if you live next to a model or movie star. I live next to a slaughterhouse and proctologist. Where does that leave me?
Havent then BEEN doing this? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Havent then BEEN doing this? (Score:2)
My company, Cannon Technologies (www.cannontech.com), is also a supplier of Distribution Line Carrier systems, and has been doing it longer than TWACS.
I'm actually programming protocols for several power line carrier meters.
Re:Havent then BEEN doing this? (Score:3, Informative)
And this is redundant, but dozens of idiots still haven't got the message: It's NOT an internet connection. It's not even a 300bps teletype connection! Power lines are not built to carry signals -- but you can sort of make it work if you send just a few bits per second, with lots of error detection and correction coding, and ask for a repeat whenever a switch flips somewhere and drowns out a packet.
Re:Havent then BEEN doing this? (Score:2)
Definitely not on par with my cable modem.
In the Seattle area, yes (Score:1)
Since it is supposed to be most cost effective to produce electricity at a constant rate, rather than larger fluctuations, this was an attempt to do "traffic shaping".
Despite some initial misgivings about the unknowns, it has worked pretty well so far. Lots of folks (my family included) now make it a habit to delay starting the laundry or dishwasher until after 9pm to get the better rate.
I am not sure exactly which technology Puget Sound Energy is using to transmit the readings back to the home office. On each monthly bill, they have a bar graph indicating how much electricity was consumed in each of the rate periods.
-Steve
Re:In the Seattle area, yes (Score:2)
sPh
Xcel vs. Qwest..... (Score:1)
Higher speed for big cities (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Higher speed for big cities (Score:3, Insightful)
I would compare this technology to that of x10.com's wireless devices [x10.com], which send very small amounts of data over house power lines. There's a lot of limitations to it... flourescent lights don't work with them, and the lack of shielding on power wiring sometimes causes devices to spontaneously turn on or off. (this happened to me with my bedroom light....it would turn itself on at 3am, very annoying).
When you hit the button to turn on a light, there is about a two-second delay. Considering that the remote is transmitting approximately 12 bits of data (4b house code, 4b device code, control bits), the data rate seems to be on the order of a few bits per second.
I'm assuming the power company is using a similar form of technology for data transfer. By the time (e.g. years down the road) a system could be set up to transfer a reasonable amount of data over a power line, access to cable/dsl/wireless internet should be advanced and widespread enough such that trying to transmit over power lines shouldn't even be worth the effort.
Of course....the concept of sending data where data shouldn't go is still pretty damn cool... 8-)
Re:Higher speed for big cities (Score:1)
Bark at me if someone else has pointed this out already.. I haven't read the whole discussion (-8
BTW, love your smileys..
Re:Higher speed for big cities (Score:2)
What article did you read... this has nothing to do with High-speed access. What speed do you think is need to read a few digits from the meter.. Even the article about interfering with other data services is about local in-house LAN, not internet access...
Re:Higher speed for big cities (Score:1)
Of course, (Score:4, Funny)
Power Line Interference with HF Radio (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Power Line Interference with HF Radio (Score:4, Funny)
One day, aliens will wonder why humanity built an enormous phased-array antenna to beam pornography and credit-card numbers into deep space.
Re:Power Line Interference with HF Radio (Score:1)
This is good (Score:2, Funny)
Now I'll be able to send a hojillion volts down the wire to those 5kr1p7 k1dd13 1337 h4x0r5 that keep DDoS'ing me off of Efnet. Well, I hope.
Re:This is good (Score:1)
In Ohio, better yet... (Score:5, Interesting)
In a small town (where I work) they have pretty progrewssive ideas on power and communications,
First they have community power, almost 1/2 the cost of Ohio Edison in the next town over. Second is community cable, once again much cheaper, third is cable internet access, $20 a month compared to Time Warners, which you can still get here,
NOW about a year ago Wadsworth put FIBER to every home in wadsworth, long term plans include long distance. AND the ability to selcetivly shut down electical stuff on peak demand, (just your air conditioner, etc) to avoid brownout, because of the above reasons , and one of the best public school systems in the country, population is exploding.
Wadsworth is a great town and I lived there during my high school years, BUT If i lived here again an axe and cutters would hit that fiber so fast it'd make your head spin. Shutting down services on your panel selectivly MY ASS.
Re:In Ohio, better yet... (Score:3, Informative)
Its not that bad, really - Xcel Energy in Minnesota has a summertime power saver option which is basically a box that attaches to your central AC compressor power tap and control line. It listens for a "shut off" signal from the power company and cuts the control line which actually switches the compressor.
The advantage is they promise a minimum amount of downtime (like 15-20 minutes per) and only during peak energy hours (8-5 or something). I've been home when they've done this and unless its the hottest day of the year (high humidity, lots of sun) you don't even notice -- the blower on your AC keeps running inside air past the condensor coil, so it feels "on" even though its not. I've heard some people say that notice a slight uptick in internal temperature, but I haven't.
The major bonus is a 15% discount on ALL electrical power for the summer months. That's like getting free AC as infrequently as I use it, or an excuse to run it twice as often for the same money.
It'd suck to have your dryer or something else shut down at random, but AC during the day is not a big deal, trust me.
Re:In Ohio, better yet... (Score:1)
But what if this "feature" was included whether you wanted it or not? It would not be as popular...
Re:In Ohio, better yet... (Score:2)
I only do it because I get discounted electricity and because it happens when I'm not home. If it was a manditory 24x7 thing to combat electricity shortages, I'd be unhappy -- we're talking my air conditioning here, fer chrissakes.
I would do it for other incentives though -- if they were giving out 5KVa utility-provided UPS systems or something I'd consider it as well.
Re:In Ohio, better yet... (Score:2)
How is having your A/C *compressor* turned off for approximately 15-20 minutes once in a while the same as not having A/C? In a typical forced-air system you still have an internal blower which is not regulated this way which is still blowing past the still-cold condensor coil. For the period of the shutoff this provides some added cooling, and the air circulation provided by the blower prevents that dead air sensation.
Regardless, they seldom use the cutoff capability except when demand is high, and demand isn't very high except when the temperatures are like those in Texas, so the impact here is no different than it would be in Texas.
All in all, it's like any other bargain -- if the gain wasn't worth the pain, I wouldn't bother.
Re:In Ohio, better yet... (Score:2)
When will people realize that there's no such thing as a free lunch, and communism DOESN'T WORK?
Re:In Ohio, better yet... (Score:3, Interesting)
Utility rates have soared because deregulation allowed companies like Enron to purchase stable utility companies and run them into the ground.
I'll take heavily regulated or co-op utilities any day.
Re:In Ohio, better yet... (Score:1)
Well in PA rates didn't skyrocket....perhaps Cali should have done it right...
Enron (Score:1)
Absolutely. But California politicians didn't mind when the big players like Enron played the major part in writing California's deregulation legislation. Want to fix it? Call your purchased senator or congressman and urge them to vote for the McCain-Feingold bill.
Re:Enron (Score:1)
There will always be loopholes....
Re:In Ohio, better yet... (Score:2)
Re:In Ohio, better yet... (Score:1)
their wholesale costs were because
they thought the wholesale costs would drop rapidly
with de-regulation.
They didn't have the laws written to only stabilize them for declining wholesale rates
because they didn't want to be too obvious.
It never occured to them that wholesale rates would go up so much.
Had the de-regulation law encouraged or required long-term contracts between power utilities and power generators (as was the case in Pennslyvania),
things would have gone much better in California.
We can thank both the Democratic majority in the state legislature and Republican govenor Pete Wilson for the mess we got.
Wilson, in particular, stated as he signed the law: "Now no one will have to be in the dark in California." or something like that.
So in California, no political party has a monopoly on stupidity or blind faith in the power of financial markets.
First time I've heard... (Score:2)
sPh
That's a really good idea! (Score:2)
Me to! No way I'm going to let them use this new IP over 480V to stop power to my house! Soon as I see them put a kill switch onto my compressor, I walk out back and axe that line. Oh wait.
OK OK, I'll have to figure out how to fake out the black box. Sooner or later, they will make a black box that can't be fooled and throw you in jail for trying.
These brown out intiatives are pure evil. Let the freaking power companies build new plants, people! They have been telling you about impending shortages for 20 years. The bad economics of the early to mid 80's then the 90's and some power saving devices helped forstall the crunch, but you can't expect that to last forever. We can have boxes or we can just make more power for ourselves and keep things nice cheap and regulated.
Network over the powerlines: not going to happen (Score:3, Interesting)
I read in this article (Wired magazine... not on the web), the total corporate history and research of this project idea.
Basically, big ass companies like AT&T etc.. did a lot of testing and decided that it was just too expensive to offer net over the powerlines. The main problem was that although one could effectively transmit data over the powerline.. once it hits a transformer the data is lost, and the only solution that 3 big companies could come up with was a device installed on each transformer to carry the signal, which is completely uneconomical and defeats the whole purpose of using the existing powergrid.
There is even a big scandal with another company that claimed they could overcome this problem.. and it turned out to be a total fake, and lawsuits galore occured.
Of course there is no problem with using the powerlines in your house to network... so Rock on Lan parties!
Re:Network over the powerlines: not going to happe (Score:2)
Am I missing something? (Score:2)
Apparently they've overcome the transformer problem.
Incompatible with X-10? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Incompatible with X-10? (Score:1)
Nothing. I was talking abount X-10 the protocol, not X-10 the company with the crappy ads (and crappy products).
If they get the last mile working.... (Score:3, Informative)
Great Idea.... (Score:1)
I'm just a little bitter though because I submitted a similar story a week or so ago and was rejected. :o
Interference with X10 (Score:1)
It sounds like a neat idea, but I just hope it doesn't interfere with all my X10 [x10.com] stuff. The protocol is unreliable enough already, we don't need more problems !
I don't think I could live without it now
Not a new idea (Score:5, Informative)
At the time, there were a number of obstacles that made this technology unworkable. If I remember correctly it had something to do with electromagnetic field sensitivity. The earth's EM and solar flares made the whole system too error prone, at the time.
This brings up another memory. A company, 10 years ago, had a cheap office wiring system that used the ground outlet as a network transport. With their adapter, any machine plugged (quite literally) was on the same network.
What made that idea (and company, I think) fold was the lack of security. Anyone could connect to your house's power outlet and get connected. Furthermore, there were no filtering devices that served as "firewall" between your house and the external power grid.
Re:Not a new idea (Score:2)
sPh
Re:Not a new idea (Score:2)
Supposedly Nova Scotia Power had a division set up to get bandwidth rolling over the power lines. But the division was bought by MT&T (the phone company, and biggest province-wide ISP) and shut down. Somewhat anti-competitive, really.
-me
Re:Not a new idea (Score:1)
Your ground wires shouldn't be connected to the power grid, to the best of my knowledge anyway. They should be connected to, um, the ground. Even if someone were to stick a pole in the ground next to your house, I doubt they could get the connectivity needed to tap your net.
Re:Not a new idea (Score:2)
So if you see any guys in ninja suits burying copper plates in your rose bushes, be alarmed.
sPh
Re:Not a new idea (Score:1)
Yikes - I have just been ignoring them.
Re:Not a new idea (Score:2)
A friend of mine had the great idea of building his own tone generator and a few times sent morse across town in the early hours by switching on and off his suburb's street lights.
Some years later they built an aluminium smelter a couple of hundred miles away
Yeah it may sound good... (Score:2, Funny)
"Hey I wanna watch tv!"
"Well, we have to wait until 3AM when every sane person is sleeping so we can have enough power..."
Re:Yeah it may sound good... (Score:2, Funny)
the girlfriend represents the difference between 'dork' and 'geek'.
BPS (Score:5, Informative)
My husband has been working with DCSI for about 2 years on the system in NE WI and there have been a few issues with interference, but not with homes and shit. The pulses aren't strong enough to interfere with normal shit, though there was one incident of a substation - which sends time synch pulses out to individual meters - setting off the railroad crossing alarms every 15 minutes.
It's a better solution than using RF to transmit the readings back to the sub - most of those are using 900MHz to transmi and you can imagine what kind of problems THAT causes.
Re:BPS == 15, not 300 (Score:1)
As far as interference goes, the system has a very good comm performance, and it very rarely interferes with other equipment.
Already there in Europe(ish) (Score:1)
Re: at EUR51/month (Score:1)
not available where i live.
aDSL will have to do, darn.
One phrase - Return on Investment (Score:5, Informative)
Our competitor got their hands slapped pretty bad by the public utility commission for that one and had to eat the entire investment. There was just no justification for such fancy toys to handle such a low-tech task.
sPh
Re:One phrase - Return on Investment (Score:2)
We've found that the real cost of minimum wage factory labor is about $20/hr, including wages, taxes, benefits, insurance, and the in-door workspace. I'd think that outdoors work would be even costlier (probably includes costs of a vehicle, insurance costs are higher since car crashes, dog-bite, pneumonia, and muggings are now work-related). Anyway, labor costs are thus $0.33/minute, so your meter readers must be reading one every minute and a half. I believe that only if it's in an urban area, and all meters are positioned to be visible from the sidewalk.
Right now I own two houses. One is in a small town (actually on Main Street!), but to reach the meter you have to walk 50 feet across the back yard. In summertime, it's going to take longer than 1-1/2 minutes, and right now the snow is 18 inches deep. Or maybe they've got binoculars that can make out the numbers from the street? I don't know, but last time I looked the faceplate was fogged up so it was hard to read at 8 inches... The other one is on 30 acres, and 200 feet from the road, with direct sight blocked. If they were to do actual readings, it would be park the car and walk around the house. However, the co-op trusts us to read the meter ourselves, and we positioned it so we can see it out the window. Good thing right now with 30 mph winds, 0 fahrenheit (-20C) actual temperature, and gigantic snowdrifts.
So the cost of meter readings and the ROI on remote-reading meters may vary. It does seem like $300 would be hard to justify -- but does it really cost that much? My employer's plant in Tampa makes (or made) meters for a Florida utility that report back their readings over the power line, and I think the electronics is around $50.
Re:One phrase - Return on Investment (Score:3)
The utility I worked for had an average mix of urban/surburban/rural for a metropolitian service territory (middle of Wyoming would be a different story). Remember that the meter reader will make up time when he hits an apartment complex and gets 50 meters in 2 minutes. Reading jobs had a piecework bonus for speed and accuracy so I am sure theere are plenty of other tricks to be used as well.
There is no way for a utility not to have outside people (except Enron I guess) so the costs you mention are already averaged in. And as a manager you tried hard not to take a reader who applied for a posted office job because they would usually drop it before the probationary period and go back outside - they liked the work, even in the winter.
sPh
Re:One phrase - Return on Investment (Score:1)
Hax0rs (Score:1)
Old news... (Score:1)
is broadband raising my electric bill??? (Score:1)
Oh goodness... (Score:2)
Trust me, it will. The model will be developed first as a way to read meters, and second (maybe) as a way to provide internet access. EVERYONE needs electricity, only some people can't live without high speed internet. The power company will implement it's meter reading first, and maybe, if you're lucky, implement a web access service, but you can bet that if it interferes at all with power or meter reading, it'll be cut as fast as they can cut it.
Expanding their applications.... (Score:3, Informative)
Radio (Score:3, Interesting)
The service indicated here seems appropriate for telemetry. I wonder if they have accounted for security in control situations though. It may be too easy for someone to forge a packet. Still, at 300 baud (or what that bps?) its interference problems maybe be far less.
Been there, done that... (Score:5, Informative)
We canned the idea for Internet, but this application sounds ideal; low bandwidth, low contention (presumably), and if it goes wrong, you can always send the legacy meter readers around in a van... Or you could upgrade all your kit, I wonder which one they'll opt for...
Re:Been there, done that... (Score:1)
The signal is generated at the sub-station level, and the system as it is used today is master-slave (sub-station - meter), so there aren't any contention problems.
This is great! (Score:1)
I don't understand why this is a big deal... (Score:1, Interesting)
He mentioned that you can go higher than the 400 amp hookups with commercial and industrial hookups, but the electrical company meters all of those automatically. Not only are they metered automatically, they can be boosted or constrained depending on power requirements in the area.
Given that the water company uses a wireless setup to meter water use in my area, and the power company does the above, I don't see why sending a small bit of information back over the lines is that big of a deal. It's all been done before. Making this a headlining
Novell patented 2mb/sec over power lines (Score:1, Interesting)
Novell patented 2mb/sec over power lines like 4 years ago.
http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20010112S0051
Nothing to do with high-speed, folks (Score:4, Informative)
There's very little in common. TWACS works by doing phase-shift modulation on the 60Hz carrier; this is a wonderfully robust method when implemented correctly, but at best you get a bandwidth of a few tens of bits per second. This is great for reading power meters (where a few bits per hour is plenty of bandwidth) but it has nothing to do with high-speed internet connections.
Re:Nothing to do with high-speed, folks (Score:1)
That's simple. (Score:1)
As others have pointed out, the main problem is that the power lines are not designed to handle that much bandwidth and sheild it from interference.
This is cool. (Score:1)
I've always hated the idea of having lots of DC transformers for every bit of electronics equipment I own. It would be much cooler if I could re use my Cat5 cable as a DC power system. Obviously this would need to be thought about carefully, and I would need to make sure I labelled the outlets carefully.
Turtle Meters (Score:5, Informative)
To quote their website
It monitors kilowatt-hours and records peak and minimum demand. The data is time-stamped and is continuously transmitted across the utility's own power lines. As long as the meter has power, the Turtle transmitter can provide a count of short outages (blinks) and establish whether the transmitter is in power fail.
The Standard Turtle transmitter can be programmed to return one of eight different data transmission options. The time needed to transmit a complete packet varies from 13.9 to 27.2 hours depending on the amount of data being transmitted.
Which falls in line with my friend telling me that it can take a day to get a reading because they are using a super low frequency. So yeah, they can remotely read meters. But they have definite problems with lightning. My friend spends a lot of his time in the summer replacing the Turtle units in the meters because they fry very easily he says. But they are cheap enough that it is still cheaper than sending a meter reader to all the houses.
Hunt says they've been doing this since 1995, so its not new, but few people have seen it because it has taken a while to get them out.
Re: (Score:2)
ouch! (Score:1)
On Call (Score:3, Informative)
Time-variable Power Rates (Score:1)
I understand systems like these are available some places, and to bulk consumers, but it would be cool if everyone had them.
The Reykjavík power company (Score:3, Informative)
I guess we can use this technology because the entire population is about 280.000 people (and about 260.000 of them use the internet) check out Fjöltengi [fjoltengi.is] even though most of you wont understand a word of that page, you can check out the pic of a chick using the magical-gadget on the main page.
Re:The Reykjavík power company (Score:2)
Thanks for the link. I thought everyone in Iceland was blonde? ;-)
sPh
In other news... (Score:2)
Inside sources report that this service will be followed shortly by delivery of high-speed Internet access over the power-lines, using the TWATS system made by DVDA. Offering 10 times the speed of Cable or DSL providers, power companies expect to be THE providers of streaming Internet video within 5 years.
Power industry (Score:1)
Second, as one in the wholesale side of the Power industry, the first thing that occurred to me on checking the internal website for jobs one day was "Why do we even still have meter readers in this day and age". It may have been a good blue-collar job in the past, but that one must go the way of the dinosaur as better technologies like this are developed.
Re:Power industry (Score:2)
There are some utilities out there who fought like crazy to retain the "old, outmoded dinosaur" model. Those that came closest to succeeding against Ken Lay and the friends he purchased are the ones that are today not scheduling rolling blackouts ala Southern California.
Given the current state of the economy and the stock market, I personally would be careful about applying "they just dont' get it" type arguments.
sPh
No pole transformer bypass required (Score:2)
Anything that sends high-speed data is going to require some way to get the signal around the pole transformer. For serious data rates (DSL and up), a router on the pole with a fibre-optic uplink to the headend is necessary.
There's a privacy issue with these things. If you have a receiver for the signals, you can watch the power consumption of everybody in your neighborhood. And if you have a transmitter, you may be able to turn some loads on and off. These things don't seem to have strong crypto.
Scientific American Article on same subject (Score:1)
How about other electrical applicances (Score:1)
privacy concerns (Score:1)
"Electric Company Using Power Lines for Data" (Score:2)
Slashdot Power Line Redux (Score:1)
High-speed Internet Access: Power Lines For Real [slashdot.org]
Linksys Incorporates HomePlug Networking [slashdot.org]
We already have this... (Score:1)
In other news (Score:2)
Field tests have demonstrated bit rates in excess of 300 Baud, and an industry spokesman said that they have hopes to get the speed up to 1200 Baud by the time of the official rollout.
In response to this announcement, the Water Utilities Association issued a press release outlining their plans for a competing acoustic Internet service. They pointed out that sound travels faster in water than in gas, so they will be able to provide lower latencies. Experts remain skeptical, however. They point out that it will take years of additional research to solve the interference problems caused by 'flushing toilet syndrome'.
There are also rumors of work on a hybrid liquid-gas Internet service via sewer lines.
Article on this... (Score:2)
I see several reasons why twe won't be getting access from our power company anytime soon:
1. It's unlikely that enough customers will sign in each final node to cover the cost of installing and maintaing a transformer;
2. Given the variablity in quality, wiring type, grounding, etc, from house to house, the costs of getting and maintaining reliable service could be high;
3. Given the glut of fiber and the number of companies going under that own fiber, it may be cheaper to buy a provuder than buidout you're own interface.
Nortel developed this... (Score:1)
They still use it for schools and stuff, but I recall there was a problem with the modems melting/overheating...
Memories of the LM1893, a power line carrier chip (Score:1)
Re:Memories of the LM1893, a power line carrier ch (Score:1)
Re:Load control (Score:1)
Re:I remember hearing about something similar.... (Score:2)