Solar panel interference on DSL?

I had an OR engineer spend several hours at my home trying to resolve some fault reporting (I have FTTC, but the original problem was a faulty phone connection). He replaced the drop wire from the pole (corrosion at the pole and weak connection in the master socket, which he also replaced with an NTE5c - which I'd hoped!). But he said there was a lot of RF noise in the area, and demonstrated to me by driving around and showing a great deal of noise as we approached the pole. He will get a relevant OR expert to do a survey, but he suggested that the solar panels on various neighbours' roofs could the the culprit. I hadn't heard of this before, but curious as to others's experiences - and what could I do to mitigate the noise?

Solar panels are low voltage DC usually, what may be a source of noise is the kit that converts this to AC for grid tie purposes.

If the noise was worst close to a telegraph pole you may well have been picking up the ADSL/VDSL signals, if it is the solar installs then you'd expect the noise to be worse as you approach the homes with the panels.

Radiation from some of the inverters associated with the panels is a known source of rf noise, there is conflicting information on the EMC specifications they have to meet. But it is by no means a general problem, many installations are 'clean' in this respect. In any case the low levels involved are such that it is unlikely to affect VDSL.

There may well be excessive noise in your area which is affecting the FTTC VDSL system but it is likely to be something else entirely, there are loads of potential noise sources, blaming solar panels seems clutching at straws.

(I speak as a radio amateur where there is a lot of documentation on solar panel noise in our technical press).

Completely agree with both the replies, about it being the panels converter IF that�s the cause.

I disagree with the OR bods demo, and subsequent explanation. Loudest near the pole would suggest to me that it was either coming from a property sharing the same pole, or that it is coming from elsewhere on the network, feeding up the pole and emanating like a huge aerial from the drop wires.

Sounds like he has raised a REIN case though, so let the REIN man cometh.

I hope the REIN man comes, and I get a chance to talk to him!

I did think it was a bit strange, but thinking about inverters it made some sense. What I wasn't convinced by was where he suggested the panels' noise would feed down the lines to the pole, and be concentrated there.

I'm about 220 m from the cab, and syncing now about 71 Mbit/s (but pretty sure it was 73+ in the past). The bad news is that when he went to the cab he discovered the line is Al !!!

I mentioned G.fast as the two neighbouring cabs have the pods. He said modern cabs can incorporate the G.fast bits without the pod, which didn't match what I understood. In either case, I'm not set up for G.fast, and according to the Register it seems unlikely to appear.

Notice careful use of 'may' rather than you are.

The key here that more investigation is needed to pin down a source location

He said modern cabs can incorporate the G.fast bits without the pod, which didn't match what I understood

Yep, you are correct there.

Your OR bod needs some additional training, or maybe to just understand that if you don�t know, then don�t make stuff up.

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

He said modern cabs can incorporate the G.fast bits without the pod, which didn't match what I understood

Yep, you are correct there.

Your OR bod needs some additional training, or maybe to just understand that if you don�t know, then don�t make stuff up.

Maybe he's very well up to date.

The newer Huawei DSLAMs that they are trialling in the ECI shells do VDSL2 and G.Fast.
No pod, just looks like an ECI cabinet.

As the G.Fast rollout stalls and if the ECI vendor swap goes full blown you may find many thousands of these end up in the network.

Huawei MA5618 DSLAM.

Och well, ya live, ya learn.

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

Och well, ya live, ya learn.

That was meant with a little more humour than what came across.

While such kit does exist it was only an initial 200 ECI DSLAMs being swapped and they were using a mix of MA5616 DSLAMs (found in the smaller Huawei cabinets) and the brand new MA5618 DSLAMs that do G.Fast.

Very unlikely this engineer has come across any of these newer DSLAMs.
Even if he/she had encountered 1 or been briefed on their existence it's a little premature to proclaim "they don't need pods now, they come in the cabinet".
These will be a rarity, if the MA5618's are even out there and live yet.

The Huawei SmartAX MA5618 does 192 VDSL2 ports (4 x 48 port cards) and 96 G.Fast ports (4 x 24 port cards).
The G.Fast line cards can also do VDSL so very flexible.

Edited by j0hn83 (Mon 07-Oct-19 00:23:16)