On Friday, November 10, 2017 at 1:05:06 PM UTC-5, Jim Wilkins wrote:
"rangerssuck" wrote in message
...

Cheapest, but hardly efficient. Again, transponders would be cheap and
could provide otherwise useful telemetry (voltage, load, etc). Our
local utility (PSE&G) has installed 200W solar panels on many poles.
Lots of poles - 40MW total. Some of these units have antennas on them.
I don't know whether they are in constant communication to a central
computer, but if they are, they could provide some useful information
about outages. But I don't think they use that information. They just
wait for enough people to call and then send out a car.
======================================

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_grid
We haven't seen a quick, easy solution because the issue is very
complex.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadb...er_power_lines
"Deployment of BPL has illustrated a number of fundamental challenges,
the primary one being that power lines are inherently a very noisy
environment."

This is a somewhat similar system in which independent nodes
intercommunicate over a single radio frequency using a collision
detection and avoidance protocol similar to Ethernet's.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_f...raffic_control)

-jsw

Oh, fer crissake, they're just not trying very hard. Our water company recently did a third upgrade of our meter sender. The first could be read by a car driving by. The next could be read by helicopter, and the current on communicates directly with a satellite, so they tell me.

Power monitors wouldn't have to transmit a whole lot of data to say "I am alive."