Enlit Europe: Eval kit to meet Prime’s hybrid smart grid comms standard

Called EVLKST8500GH-2, it combines the company’s ST8500 power-line communication SoC, STLD1 line driver and S2-LP low-power long-range sub-GHz radio transceiver – a chipset which is certified to the v1.4 Hybrid specification of power-line communication industry body Prime Alliance, in which ST, Microchip, Renesas and Intel are among 58 members.

“Messages between two nodes in the power-line communication [PLC] and RF hybrid network are sent over the best available medium: PLC or RF,” according to ST. “The media selection for each link in the network is done automatically and adjusted dynamically, enabling highly efficient hybrid mesh networking.”

At least two of the kits (left) are required to start a network, and STSW-ST8500GH-2 is the necessary firmware and documentation package.

Certification to 1.4 Hybrid specification “facilitates deployment of smart meters and enables Prime to support applications in smart-home and smart-city segments by ensuring interoperability and compatibility between devices and infrastructures”, said ST. In addition, “S2-LP radio enables long-range communication both the license-free ISM and SRD frequency bands” and “ST8500  allows supporting powerline and hybrid RF protocol stacks across global frequency bands like CENELEC and FCC”.

And NB-IoT

Also at Enlit Europe, ST will show its postage stamp sized ST87M01 NB-IoT industrial module series, compliant with 3GPP Release 15, for connection to massively-deployed cellular IoT network infrastructure.

The first two variants are now available: ST87M01-1000 NB-IoT module, and ST87M01-1100 which adds a GNSS receiver for location-aware applications such as asset trackers. A secure element can be integrated for GSMA eSA (security assurance) certification.

See ST on stand 7.2.A70 at Enlit Europe, 28-30 November 2023, Paris Expo Porte de Versailles.

Find the power-line and rf comms evaluation kit here