Smart Metering won’t cause problems for amateur radio, say RSGB

The following is from this week's RSGB News

Last week the Government announced that it wishes to press ahead with plans for Smart Metering, with full implementation by 2020.

This was a policy announcement that had been long expected. It was not a shot out of the blue for the RSGB and the EMC committee.

Whilst the method of remote reading of the millions of meters has not yet been finally decided, it is most likely that it will make use of established technology; any immediate alarm is unwarranted, since in this case it really means Power Line Signalling or PLS.

Power Line Signalling has been around for over 100 years and is widely used for the control of street lighting, the switching of tariff rates and control of the power grid. In particular, it uses very low data rates and a frequency below 150 kHz. It is not the same as broadband power line technology, which uses frequencies between 4MHz and 26.5MHz.

More details will be in July’s RadCom.

Source: GB2RS News