Re: Powerline modem

From: Peter (peterwn_at_parazzdise.net.nz)
Date: 02/10/05 

Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2005 10:00:28 GMT

On Wed, 9 Feb 2005 14:43:24 +0000 (UTC), kensmith@green.rahul.net (Ken
Smith) wrote:

>In article <i4uf01doft60n1f23rt4ep34kf7b8o5d6u@4ax.com>,
>Jim Thompson <thegreatone@example.com> wrote:
>[...]
>>(1) RF transmitter at your meter, "neighborhood" receiver located on a
>>pole, then connection to phone lines.
>>
>>(2) Modem connection between your meter and *your* phone line. Power
>>company polls your modem.
>
>I'll add:
>
>(3) An RF responder that is pinged from a truck going down the street.
>
>
>I know, some places use this for water meters, but I expect that someone
>has done it for power meters.
>
It seems interesting that none of these technologies has made
significant inroads into meter reading for smaller customers. About
the only development that has been widely adopted is a hand held
computer to replace the meter reading book.

There has been talk of these systems going hand in hand with demand
side management eg real time pricing, but efforts to reduce the cost
of these systems to a lever where they are worth adopting seem so far
to be without success.

The most successful niche seems to be a low bandwidth system for rural
areas (where meter reading costs are very high) which does not require
transformer bridging ( http://www.turtletech.com ).