STMicroelectronics will showcase advancements in multi-utility and smart infrastructure digitalization for sustainability during Enlit Europe, including its newly certified PRIME 1.4 Hybrid smart grid chipset.

ST’s smart-grid chipset is the industry-first solution that achieved certification according to the widely recognized PRIME 1.4 Hybrid specification that standardizes robust and flexible communication using both wired and wireless connections in a seamless way to achieve best network coverage and modularity. Certification facilitates deployment of smart meters and enables PRIME to support new applications in smart-home and smart-city segments by ensuring interoperability and compatibility between devices and infrastructures. The chipset comprises the Company’s ST8500 powerline communication (PLC) SoC, the STLD1 line driver and the S2-LP ultra-low-power radio transceiver to ensure robust and flexible communication leveraging hybrid powerline and wireless connectivity. The S2-LP radio enables long-range communication in the sub-1GHz frequency bands, operating in both the license-free ISM and SRD frequency bands. The ST8500 SoC’s programmability allows for a software-defined implementation, capable of supporting the widest range of powerline and hybrid RF protocol stacks across global frequency bands like CENELEC and FCC.

The ST8500 SoC platform is extensively used in smart metering, smart industrial, and infrastructure applications. Furthermore, ST’s hardware and firmware solution has been chosen to power the official PRIME Hybrid certification-testing tool released by the TECNALIA independent certification laboratory.

To facilitate development of smart meters and other systems designed to connect through this chipset, ST has made available a new evaluation multi-standard Hybrid PLC & RF kit, the EVLKST8500GH-2. The kit contains an ST8500 PLC module, S2-LP radio expansion board, STM32 Nucleo microcontroller (MCU) board, and baseboard that performs as a carrier and provides additional functionality. The kit is compatible with other X-NUCLEO application expansion boards and comes with STSW-ST8500GH-2 software framework and documentation for developers to get started on their projects quickly and easily.

The EVLKST8500GH-2 evaluation kit is available now.