Enlit Africa 2022 – Utility CEO Forum

From 7 to 9 of June 2022, PRIME Alliance was participating as a sponsor at the Enlit Africa and the Utility CEO Forum taking place in Cape Town, South Africa. This year, the event was focused on the theme “Collaboration to fast forward Africa’s Energy Transition”.

Special thanks to El Sewedy (PRIME Principal Member) for officially representing and supporting the association during the event.

Watch now the interview with Ali Mulla at the ESI Africa Studio about the standardisation of the powerline communication!

In addition, watch here also the online interview hosted by ESI Africa with Javier Hernandez from Iberdrola, PRIME Alliance AISBL member, where he discusses his technical expertise on this year’s trends, futureproofing the electricity supply industry’s infrastructure, and how it relates to the unique challenges of Africa’s utility sector.

Apart from the digitalisation of utilities, it was also thematised how the new strategies and skills are required in the near future by distribution utility technical teams to roll out smart metering infrastructure programmes.

PRIME Alliance goes Hybrid – The Global Elites 2022

The hybrid solution selected by the PRIME Alliance has been realized by integrating both physical (PHY) layers into a common PHY layer that is used by the same media access control (MAC) layer of the previous versions. A hybrid node can use both physical layers and maintain connectivity with neighbouring nodes with different technologies. For each connection the technology chooses the most suitable medium and modulation to provide stable and fast communication.

PLC-only protocols remain unchanged, making the integration fully backward compatible. The new solution allows hybrid and PLC-only devices to be integrated on the same network and is also fully compatible with RF-only devices, enabling new applications.

Find out more on the advantages of PRIME Hybrid reading the entire article written by Alfredo Sanz (Microchip – PRIME member) for the Global Elites 2022 edition.

PRIME Alliance announces updates on standards to ease adoption of broadband by utilities at ENLIT 2021

Brussels, December 14, 2021 – PRIME Alliance, (PoweRline Intelligent Metering Evolution), a consortium of utilities and companies collaborating to set up real interoperability telecommunications solutions for smart grids deployment, announced the release of an IDC report which found that broadband will soon become mainstream in the utility industry. Within this context, broadband over power technology (BPL) will have a clear opportunity to contribute to the telecommunications technologies mix within utilities’ future operations.

In the report, IDC – one of the premier research and media firms in the US – highlights broadband’s unique ability to transmit data quickly and securely. BPL offers “a good balance of technical capabilities (e.g., low latency, high availability) and cost, as this technology uses existing power line wiring to transmit the signal.” The report also added that “field results obtained so far demonstrate that these [BPL] products can reach physical data rates in the range of 150 to 250 Mbps.”

The report was commissioned by the PRIME Alliance, developers of a mature, consolidated worldwide powerline communication (PLC) standard for advanced metering, grid control and asset monitoring applications. After years of designing an interoperable and open specification for the implementation of broadband-power-line (BPL) telecommunications technology, the Alliance announced its advanced status at the energy conference ENLIT in Milan on November 30, 2021.

The General Secretary of the PRIME Alliance, Miguel Sanchez-Fornie, notes:
“the IDC report indicates that 9 out of 11 utility respondents plan to use BPL in their smart grids deployments, marking an industry inflection point in the adoption of this communication technology for grid digitalization”

IDC’s report detailed four specific use cases that utilities in Europe have validated:

• BPL smart meters with BPL concentrators, enabling edge computing in the electric grid.
• Coexistence of BPL and narrowband (NB) powerline communication, enabling utilities to incrementally add BPL to existing narrowband solutions.
• BPL smart meter gateways, enabling sensing and demand management.
• BPL on medium voltage lines, enabling backhaul and traffic aggregation in the network formed by the electric grid.

In addition, IDC’s report states that “the need for lower latency [and] cyber-secure communication, will top the priorities list of future smart grids. BPL semiconductors have significant computational power that enables the future implementation of edge computing, AI, and even blockchain applications in BPL nodes.”
Network digitalization is indirectly being pushed by regulators who have already mandated that utilities offer consumers and decentralized producers both security and near to real-time data about the grid, pricing, and power use.

Utilities should consider leveraging their existing infrastructure by adopting broadband to transmit millions of messages per minute, which is desperately required to manage increasingly complex networks.

Discover the main findings here!

^{About the IDC Report
The report was funded by CORINEX, ELSEWEDY ELECTROMETER, E.ON, SAGEMCOM, UVAX AND ZIV. The complete version will be available for members of the PRIME Alliance.
About PRIME Alliance
PRIME (PoweRline Intelligent Metering Evolution) Alliance AISBL was created in 2009 to define an open and future-proofed communications PLC-based infrastructure to support large scale smart metering and other smart grid deployments. The goal of the Alliance is to provide a framework in which the smart metering and smart grid industry have access to open detailed technical specifications in order to develop fully interoperable solutions, allowing multiple vendors to be operational within the same distribution network in one common system architecture. The PRIME Alliance provides a forum for the definition, maintenance and support of an open and comprehensive standard for narrowband power line for Smart Grid products and services. The Alliance is open to all potential partners who agree to actively support and promote an open and public specification for the benefit of the end-user and all industry stakeholders. Visit www.prime-alliance.org for more information or to join the Alliance}

Time to migrate from PRIME 1.3 to 1.4 network – ZIV Webinar on December 15 at 12:00 (CET)

ZIV (PRIME PAD member) organized a webinar last December 15 to explain what the migration from 1.3 to 1.4 implies:

– the key evolutions of version 1.4 of the standard.

– the robustness optimization of the physical frames.

– the extension of the frequency band in which communication is enabled.

– different practical scenarios and consideration points for deployment.

– The PRIME Gateway, a PRIME 1.3 / 1.4 base node with integrated LTE cellular communications, a facilitator of the migration process.

We encourage you to participate. However, if your agenda prevents you from doing so, do not worry; just by being registered you will receive a link to see the webinar on demand. Do not miss it … register now here!

FAQs about powerline communication technology by Renesas – Smart Energy International

Times might have changed, but the key questions with regard to PLC applications remain the same, writes Christos Aslanidis. Around two decades ago, many discussions were ongoing about whether narrowband powerline communication (PLC) technology was appropriate for dedicated applications, with the primary focus being on Automatic Meter Reading (AMR).

Find out more on PLC technology here!

PRIME gateways are the enablers of the LV communications evolution by ZIV – Smart Energy International

Galder Vizcaya highlights some of the important roles of gateways:

PRIME 1.4 gateways are devices that have PRIME PLC communication interfaces, ethernet and cellular interfaces, with the capabilities to redirect traffic from one to another. Galder explains that the key role of the gateways is as a key component in the transition of networks from PRIME 1.3.6 to PRIME 1.4. During this transition, there might be networks where meters using either version of the protocol coexist. PRIME 1.3 Data Concentrators can manage PRIME 1.4 networks through a PRIME Gateway.

Discover more about PRIME gateways here!

A stitch in time saves nine by Arkossa – Smart Energy International

Arkossa has broad, hands-on field experience with smart meter deployments and an in-depth understanding of the practicalities of deploying, optimising, maintaining, and operating powerline communications networks.

Arkossa offers a unique value for providing customized services and solutions to satisfy the needs of our customers related to powerline smart metering systems.

Read the entire article here!

PRIME ALLIANCE organizes a webinar, especially aimed at Ibero-American electricity companies, which will reflect on the essential role of telecommunications in the energy transition.

Electricity companies are essential agents in the energy transition necessary to contribute to the decarbonisation of energy. On the other hand, digitization is a process that affects all economic activities, also providing an excellent opportunity to accelerate this energy transition.

As has been demonstrated in many countries, the deployment of smart meters has become a first step on the path to digitization which, in short, will lead to converting conventional electrical grids to smart ones.

Telecommunications services are one of the essential factors in this digitization so that their provision and control is essential for the electricity business itself.

In this context, the PRIME ALLIANCE organized a webinar aimed in particular at electricity companies in Latin America, in order to share real experiences and reflect on the opportunity to use our telecommunications technologies, which includes the great advantage derived from using existing assets and own your company.

ZIV Automation and its parent company Alfanar have delivered some 550,000 smart meters for Saudi Electricity Company (SEC)’s smart grid deployment.

The smart meters were manufactured locally through the group’s EPC company Alfanar Construction.

In addition to the smart meters, ZIV Automation also provided a dual communication technology, PLC-PRIME 1.4 FCC and NB-IoT system. The ZIV meter deployed is a modular design with integrated dual technology, PLC PRIME 1.4 and NB-IoT. It is a flexible smart meter that incorporates a unique sealed holster designed to host a pluggable communications module (LTE Cat 1). It is both, PLC-PRIME 1.4 certified on all channels and OIML R46 certified.

Read the entire article here!

Prime Alliance, within the activity of its BPL Task Force, commisioned IDC to ellaborate a survey with utilities and vendors to check directly the present and future use of BPL. The results are briefed in this Summary and shows a clear positive attitude to use this technology as an important contribution to the power networks digitalization. Its use will be very much complementary to what has been done, and planned to do, within the narrow band domain.

Prime Alliance has been working in the last two years to design an interoperable and open specification for the implementation of this telecommunications technology and its advanced status will be announced in ENLIT (Milan, November 2021).

The report has been funded by CORINEX, ELSEWEDY, EON, SAGEMCOM, UVAX AND ZIV. Complete version will be available only to members of the PA upon the Milan event.