Power Line Communication Applied in a Typical Brazilian Urban Power Network

Smart Grids are composed of many features and new technologies which are gradually incorporated to traditional electrical networks. Smart Metering is one of these new features, it remotely manages consumers, enables fraud prevention, identifies faults and shutdowns, and manages distribution transformers, among others. In this context, this paper presents the development of a complete Smart Metering System which utilizes Power Line Communication (PLC) technology considering the standard PRIME (PoweRline Intelligent Metering Evolution) applied in a typical Brazilian urban electrical network. The results analysis shows that the standard PRIME, although quite widespread in the European community, presents several operational constraints in the Brazilian electrical network affecting its performance in terms of communication, but not preventing its use. Therefore, it is urgent to apply new technical standards and that inspection agencies work to ensure that such standards will be applied, under the penalty of making unfeasible the use of the new communication technologies for the environment of the Smart Grids in the Brazilian scenario.