PLC devices are widely used by home users to bring Internet connection anywhere in the house. As of 2011 in Spain, all new constructions have Ethernet network sockets in the living room, bedrooms and even in the kitchen. Before this date, this was not the case, so the most normal thing was not to have Ethernet network sockets. One of the best options is buy some Powerline or PLC to carry the connection through the electrical network, however, these devices are not perfect and can suffer disconnections at certain times.
Reasons for disconnection when putting appliances
Powerline or PLC devices are very sensitive to electrical interference that may exist in our home network. In fact, if we do not have a relatively new installation, with its differentials and automatics in good condition, you will surely have quite a few synchronization problems with these devices, because the electrical network is not working as it should, or simply because the Powerlines you have bought are very sensitive to voltage variations and even harmonics.
Home appliances are one of the main threats to Powerline devices, although it depends on which appliance we have. Generally, the refrigerator does not pose a serious problem for the PLC, neither for the stability of the connection nor for establishing the connection, the reason is that the power it needs for its operation is very stable, without aggressive variations in electrical consumption over time. real.
However, there are other household appliances that do pose a problem for PLCs, specifically those that require a lot of electrical power to function:
- Oven: while the oven reaches its operating temperature, it can require a power of about 2,000W without any problem. This supposes a very high power in a short time, so while it heats up we could have synchronization problems of the PLCs. Once you only need to maintain the temperature at the set degrees, the power required will decrease and we won’t have as many problems.
- Dishwasher and washing machine: these appliances usually require a maximum power of about 1200W, less than an oven, however, these appliances usually require very high power in a short time, such as when the dishwasher heats the water or when the washing machine is spinning. In the moments of greatest power required is when we will have problems.
- Drying machine: This appliance is one of those that needs the most energy to work, so it will also be an enemy of the Powerlines.
- Microwave: it is similar to the case of the oven, if we put the microwave it is possible that we will have a cut in the synchronization of the Powerline, although generally the duration of heating something in the microwave is a few seconds or a few minutes.
- Hair dryer: hair dryers usually need a power of 2,200W, in this case we would be like in the oven, if we plug in the dryer we may have problems with cuts.
Any other appliance that needs high power to work properly, such as electric or induction hob, will affect PLC devices, both in their speed, connection latency and synchronization, since we could have random cuts while using the devices. old appliances.
What to do to avoid cuts?
Really little or nothing you can do, there are Powerline devices that behave much better than others when an appliance requires power to be able to work, and they are not cut off, although the download speed, upload speed and also the latency of the connection will always be affected. One of the weak points of this type of device is precisely this, that we need the electrical network of our house to be in perfect condition, that we do not have any type of device generating noise such as a UPS if it is connected very close to the PLC, as well as that we do not have any appliance demanding too much power.
What we could do is change the model and even the PLC brand, it doesn’t matter if they are in the same price range, the important thing is that the chipset that controls the HomePlug electrical network is different, in order to ensure that will perform somewhat better than our current model. However, if you have the opportunity to set up a Wi-Fi mesh network Even if it has two or three medium-high range nodes, it will surely work better than PLCs if you have this type of outages.
