The need for a cost effective yet reliable communication infrastructure has tremendously increased in the past 10-15 years to keep up with the current demand within the organization. Many organizations including the utility companies have developed their communication infrastructure to support many network-based interconnected devices or applications such as Supervisory Control And Data Acquitation (SCADA), Remote Meter Reading (RMR), Fault recorder, Power Quality and so on. Additionally, there are also administrative requirements for customer billing, intranet connectivity for enterprise applications, internet and emails, corporate telephony - VoIP, Video conferencing and others demand more.
In view of these scenerios, many utilities own and operate their own private Wide Area Network (WAN) and applications network via high speed fibre optic, licensed radio-trunk, GSM, Power Line Carrier and Wi-Fi network. While utilities always in the lookup for cost effective solutions yet reliable solutions, and certain technology mentioned above are not always the best choices in all cases. Very often, communication infrastructure has become the main obstacles especially in deploying a practical and large Realtime Energy Management System.
Let's look at the Powerline communication for an alternative solution. This technology has been introduced since 1920s and it has evolved in different segments to support different needs.
