.The increasing volatile and decentralised feed-in as well as the demand from charging stations is putting a strain on power grids worldwide. Therefore, elements for the monitoring, protection and automation of medium-voltage power networks are required. This requires an exchange of data between these elements such as
- Measuring devices and sensors for monitoring and controlling current and voltage values
- Actuators such as feeder or feeder switches, e.g. in the event of limit value violations
- Control and switching components.
On the one hand, communication systems must fulfil the communication requirements of the applications, but on the other hand they must also be very cost-effective.
Power Line Communication (PLC) is widely used today for communication between the elements of the distribution network (low voltage network). Here, the data is transmitted via the existing power cables.
CC ISN researches and develops PLC over the medium voltage lines between local network transformer stations, based on the Power Line data bUS (PLUS) technology (PLUS-MV). This is optimised for highest reliability, real-time requirements and sufficient bandwidth to enable time-critical monitoring, protection and automation data between transformer stations or in smaller clusters of transformer stations.
An example of such an application with the highest requirements is the networking of phasor measurement units (PMU), with communication latencies < 10 ms. For high-precision synchro phasor time stamping (in the range < 1 us), a dedicated time synchronisation technology was developed (PLUS TimeSync), reusing the broadband PLUS signal. Successful field tests in a real cluster of transformer stations prove the performance of PLUS-MV with achievement of latency, availability and bandwidth requirements.
