Our power grid is undergoing radical changes. What started with many new types of electric household appliances and digital entertainment technology has now expanded to the advancing of electric vehicles and the increase in renewable energy sources. All those, and more innovations and developments utilize the power grid. This leads to challenges for the digitalSTROM Power Line Communication (PLC). To obtain a seamless communication, the electrical network must stay below a certain level of interference. High power devices such as electric vehicles, solar inverters, heat pumps with frequency converters, induction stoves and shower toilets (Geberit AquaClean, Closomat,…) can cause a lot of distortions in the power grid. This can lead to communication issues between the digitalSTROM Meters (dSM) and the attached digitalSTROM devices like clamps, relays, etc.
For this purpose, digitalSTROM has developed several types of filters that help to keep the communication stable and reliable.
Cabinet filter
The digitalSTROM Filter (dSF) is used for filtering out interference from the mains supply lines and to decouple other installations communication signals from the digitalSTROM system. Its main goal is power line conditioning to ensure proper communication. The dSF blocks signal transmission to outside powerline and therefore serves as an additional security and privacy feature.
Device filter
In rare cases, high interference pulses are introduced into the 230V mains during the operation of electrical devices, so that the Power Line Communication can be impaired. For example, during simultaneous operation of several switched-mode power supplies with larger power requirements such as induction cookers or electric car charging stations in the immediate vicinity. In such cases, the device filter is installed in front of the interfering device and minimizes the impairment of the network by high-frequency interference.
digitalSTROM filters overview
The digitalSTROM filter scheme for the dS-FD230