The contemporary world every day faces more and more increasing problem energy supply deficiency. This fact stimulates search for alternative energy sources. But preservation and sensible usage of the already existing kinds of power is one of the most logical ways to acquire an additional power-supply source. Thus, everybody understands that ENERGY is a commodity, and commodity is subject to strict STOCK-TAKING.

On the example of electric power we can see clearly the primary objective. It is to create the AMR systems (Automatic Meter Reading System). In case of upper level AMR systems the problem of energetic cross-flow between the state and big internal regions has almost been solved. But the accounting of power consumption by big industrial consumers, and especially small ultimate consumers is still kept poorly, and is very limited.

AMR-byt (small-scale consumers) becomes really effective only when it covers completely every inhabited locality, districts, cities. This gives an opportunity to carry out statistical monitoring, make forecasts, to take into account peak loads, carry out multi-tariff energy consumption accounting, to reveal the stealing points, etc. The basic economical effect of these systems for a consumer is the reduction of charges for the energy and power usage, and for the energetic companies – in consumption peaks reduction, in reduction of expenditures on building-up peak generating powers, timeliness of payments, impossibility of energy stealing.

In irder to solve this problem it is necessary to install new digital energy meters with built-in PLC communicators while replacing old impulse meters.

This gives the following advantages:

Reduction of Exploitation Expenditures:

• Reduction of expenditures for meter reading;
• Elimination of problems connected with access to the subscribers’ apartments;
• No expenses for connection and disconnection of a subsciber (remote disconnection);
• No expenses for energy stealing detection;
• Reduction of expenses for tariff devices programming;
• Reduction of expenses for solution of arguable situations with subscribers;
• Reduction of expenses for installation;
• Cash streams improvement;
• Avoidance of incorrect meter reading;
• Possibility of more frequent billing the subscribers;
• Disconnection of a subscriber in case of delinquency;
• Energy stealing detection;
• Detection of technical energy losses.

Rationality of Investment:

• Usage of one system instead of a range of various devices (timers, multirate meters, portable meter reading terminals, energy consumption control system impulse receivers);
• Consumed power diagram peaks smoothing while average consumption increases;
• Relatively low cost of the system;
• Possibility of using one data transmission channel for reading different accounting devices of different systems (such as electricity, water, heating, gas, fire alarm and security systems…) with no conflicting protocols.

Improvement in Relations with the Consumers:

• A more complete control over personal energy consumption (social aspect);
• A more precise billing;
• No inspectors visiting the subscribers’ apartments;
• An improved access of a subscriber to the information about his personal energy consumption;
• A possibility of tariff reduction, as there are no defaulters existing at the expense of others.

Our technology “SHEPOT” gives all these possibilities. It is based on a combination of the latest spectrum extension technologies, and is used for building equipment transmitting information through electricity supply network wires. Tests of new equipment showed that usage of the “SHEPOT” technology for information transmission through electric network wires allows to provide absolutely effective 100% connection between any points of low-voltage (220 V) network regardless of the network configuration, extension of wires, and density of various consumers on the network, including non-linear impulse power supply devices.

The main problem of electric network usage as a channel for information transmission is presence of noise and impulse interferences in it. As a result, usage of cable as a channel is quite complicated. Any device connected to the network brings additional interferences, such as “white Gaussian noise”. Household appliances, computers, etc. cause impulse interferences. Apart from that, fast fading causes interferences in the cable because of its uneven amplitude-frequency characteristics (AFC). This causes unpredictable interferences and breaks of the carrying signal. That is why there is a risk of data losses in low quality networks. Maintaining of a reliable communication channel becomes a very labor-intensive process. These are the difficulties the alternative technologies had to face. And these are the problems successfully solved by the “SHEPOT” technology, which proved to be a reliable system of maintaining data transmitting channel through power line in low-quality networks, which is a significant advantage in comparison with Western analogs.