An energy first as UK successfully transmits data via national electricity grid

An energy first as UK successfully transmits data via national electricity grid

New technology is a significant step towards the creation of virtual power stations that would enable smarter electricity use by homes and businesses

Data has been transmitted across a national electricity grid for the first time, in what could be a significant step towards the creation of virtual power stations, where many thousands of homes and businesses combine to manage electricity use more smartly.

The new technology could lead to lower energy bills for consumers who allow small variations in the energy consumption of their appliances, such as water heaters or freezers.

The flexibility provided by thousands of appliances combined could reduce peaks in energy use and remove the need for some large new gas or nuclear power stations or polluting diesel generator farms that are started up in times of short supply.

The new data system, created using telecoms technology by Reactive Technologies (RT) and now successfully tested on the UK?s National Grid, could also allow the optimum use of intermittent renewable energy, an important feature given the fast-rising proportion of green energy on the grid.

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Hopefully the apparent need for truck-sized resistors makes it more difficult to hack than some things - but what if someone were to hijack the control of this system? So that devices increased their consumption (as much as they can) at a critical moment when the real need is to reduce it as fast as possible? The bigger the potential benefits of any system like this, the bigger the potential problems if mis-used.

Reply to
polygonum
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In message , polygonum writes

More importantly:-) outside the terms of their existing wayleaves for either overhead or buried cables.

Must give the CLA a nudge! and join Harry in the consumer rip off bonanza.

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Reply to
Tim Lamb

On "hacking", the new system is digital. So it is as secure (or insecure) as the encryption and the design of the access points.

Also I somehow doubt it was using truck-sized resistors. Reactance, perhaps.

Reply to
newshound

Doubt to your heart's content, you might be absolutely right, but my comment is based on the quoted article:

"To test the new technology, RT set up a handful of electrical devices - truck-sized resistors - across the UK to generate the messages and then installed 20 listening receivers in other places, connected only via the National Grid. When the messages were sent out, they were successfully received."

Reply to
polygonum

Yebbut...how can a resistor, truck-sized or otherwise "insert(s) the data as small changes in the 50Hz signal"? I suspect mis-reporting somewhere along the line.

Reply to
Chris Hogg

causing a sequence of voltage drops, by switching it in and out of circuit, at a guess

Reply to
Andy Burns

I was expecting some sort of frequency modulation, but you may be right.

Reply to
Chris Hogg

I don't know about 'across the grid' but mains-borne 'ripple control' was used for air raid warning and street light control during WWII.

Owain

Reply to
spuorgelgoog

on 11/10/2016, snipped-for-privacy@gowanhill.com supposed :

I didn't know that - have you a web site source for more information please?

Reply to
Harry Bloomfield

Let me know how you get on as I argued this point and the DNO said that as they were not selling the bandwidth on the fibre strung along the top of our 132kV pylon was covered by the existing wayleave.

AJH

Reply to
news

I agree. Most likely tiny amounts of phase modulation.

Reply to
Roger Hayter

Data was being transmitted on the grid back in the 1970s. Eg, you could buy baby alarms which plugged into 13a sockets, data transmit ted through the house wiring

Reply to
harry

Later nuclear attack sirens were handled by something on the GPO side, IIRC.

The did try to switch streetlamps (dawn/dusk) using a single harmonic on top of the LV mains and a tuned relay in each lamppost sometime in the

50s-60s, but apparently passing trains (on 3rd rail services) were prone to making them flash.
Reply to
Tim Watts

And then of course many many radio frequencies, already polluted by powerline adaptors and badly designed swith mode psus would be totally unusable anywhere in the country. What a bummer. Brian

Reply to
Brian Gaff

They wired it up with a Russ Andrew's cable?

Reply to
John Rumm

Early implementations of ripple control occurred during World War II in various parts of the world using a system that communicates over the electrical distribution system.

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New Scientist, 21 April 1983, page 170

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(Google Books)

The other resources I have, which describe the system in detail, are Newnes electrical books from the 1940s and 1950s.

Owain

Reply to
spuorgelgoog

Many years ago the London Science Museum had an exhibit of this. Bursts of audio tone were added on or off every second it seemed. A tuned circuit reacted to the audio by giving a swinging armature on a spring a kick at every burst. The swing rate was tuned to the burst rate, and when the armature had built up a sufficient amplitude of swing it operated a switch for the street light. I can't remember how the light was switched off.

Reply to
Dave W

Yes, I remember seeing that. It was a very oversized version of the actual relays in use, I believe. At about the same time, in the early

1960's, I had an ex-WD Marconi CR100 communications receiver. I'm not sure quite what the source of the sound was, possibly a loose winding in the mains transformer, but when the receiver was on I could hear those audio tone pulses in the early evening, lasting for perhaps 30 seconds or so, and at the same time the street lights in our area came on. It was a beep-beep-beep etc. I was told that the control room that transmitted the pulses was in Redruth, some twelve miles or so away, and that it controlled all the street lights in west Cornwall.
Reply to
Chris Hogg

I've now found this interesting site that shows circuits and photos of the sort of thing I saw:

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It seems that a different tone burst sequence was used to switch off the light.

Reply to
Dave W

Chris Hogg formulated the question :

We had a two bar electric fire and when on, would reproduce the tones. That would have been around 1957, because I had initially convinced myself it was somehow picking up the Sputnik as it passed over.

We had gas street lighting in those days, so I would never see the electric lights come on.

Reply to
Harry Bloomfield

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