Technology

When the number of smart meters reaches millions of units, it is not an easy task to achieve secure and reliable communications with utility control centres. Even more difficult is to guarantee the real time capabilities often demanded by smart grid applications. For such situations, cost-effective telecommunications pose a great challenge for the successful roll-out of smart metering systems.

PRIME provides a forum for the definition, maintenance and support of open and comprehensive solutions for Smart Grid communications in Medium and Low Voltage Networks.

PRIME (PoweRline Intelligent Metering Evolution) represents a public, open and non-proprietary telecommunications architecture which supports present and future AMM functionalities and enables the building of the electricity networks of the future, or smart grids.

The target of PRIME is to establish a complete set of international standards which will allow for full interoperability among equipment and systems from different providers. Thus, competition in the metering market will benefit utilities and its customers.

The components of PRIME architecture (modulation and coding techniques, protocols, data formats etc.) are not subject to any Intellectual Property Rights. Specifications are comprehensive and detailed enough so that any new entrant will be able to provide interoperable solutions to the market.

Technology

For further information please download our Technology leaflet.

Download

PRIME Benefits for new deployments

PRIME initially defines lower OSI layers of a narrowband PLC data transmission system over the electricity grid. The whole architecture has been designed to be low-cost but high-performance. It uses Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) in narrowband frequency ranges.