Evaluation of PRIME v1.4 in a LV grid with the presence of renewable energy sources and electric vehicle charging processes

This paper empirically characterizes the performance of Power Line Communications (PLC) data transmission according to PRIME v1.4 standard in a low voltage (LV) grid where electric vehicles (EVs) and a set of modern power sources are present. The study is conducted in a reconstructed LV grid, and it considers three different operation conditions. Under these realistic channel conditions, first, the success rate of each PRIME v1.4 channel is calculated. The results demonstrate the better performance of the highest frequency channels. Additionally, the Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) of the received frames and the corresponding Frame Error Rate (FER) are analyzed. The results provide typical SNR values for achieving acceptable communications quality in a realistic environment involving modern power sources. Finally, the effect of connecting an EV to the setup on the communication thresholds is evaluated.