Is BPL Gaining Momentum — Again?
 

12/27/2006
Annie Lindstrom

This BPL-enabled smart meter manufactured by Landis+Gyr will be utilized in the nation’s first automated, “smart” electric grid to improve the management of TXU’s system. These smart meters give retail electric providers the information they need to design consumer services that facilitate better management and conservation of energy.
For years, folks in the broadband-over-powerline space have promised an impending surge of activity for BPL. But, at least in the United States, BPL has failed to spark significant deployment in access and in-home networks. However, some still suggest BPL is gaining momentum and will offer the coverage necessary to light up broadband networks when network operators are ready to flip the switch.

As DSL’s biggest selling point was the ubiquity of twisted copper pair, BPL’s biggest selling point remains the fact that it is carried over the world’s other ubiquitous transport medium — electrical transmission and distribution wires. Much like DSL in its early days, BPL has been subject to fits and starts since it flew onto the telecom industry’s radar screen at the beginning of the decade. Since then, there have been more fits than starts evidenced by the fact that there are only about 6,000 BPL-based broadband subscribers nationwide, according to FCC reports. Of course, lots of DSL- and cable modem-powered lines have been deployed since then, too, making BPL less appealing to some utilities that might have taken an initial interest in becoming broadband providers when this market was new, says Teresa Mastrangelo, principal analyst for broadbandtrends.com.

“Utilities are not highly competitive,” says Leif Ericson, business development manager for Southern Telecom, subsidiary of Southern Co., a super-regional energy concern in the Southeast. Southern conducted field trials of BPL for consumer broadband in 2004, but today the company is focusing its efforts on evaluating the technology from a core utility application perspective only, he adds.

Indeed, it appears to be turning out that, just like DSL, which needed the prodding of competition from MSOs deploying cable modem technology to overcome the fits and start for good, BPL is in need of a push. BPL got a boost in November when the FCC classified BPL as an interstate information service, rather than a telecommunications service. But the push that may get BPL rolling once and for all is the fact that electrical utilities are awakening to BPL’s potential to add intelligence, a.k.a. Smart Grid capability, to their networks, according to Joe Marsilii, president and CEO of BPL equipment maker and integrator MainNet Powerline Inc.

Since the Northeast Blackout of 2003, the London terrorist bombings of 2005 and 9/11, “there has been an enormous effort and focus on adding intelligence to the electric grid to avoid outages, cut costs and to support homeland security over power lines,” says Marsilii, “much more so today than when we launched our business in 2000.”

As a result, Marsilii predicts, 70 percent to 80 percent of the nation’s electrical grid will be equipped with BPL in five to eight years.

When it comes to actual deployment of BPL in the access portion of the network, all eyes currently are on CURRENT Technologies LLC, which recently began building a BPL access network to provide Smart Grid capability for Dallas-based utility TXU Corp. In addition to providing TXU with a means of monitoring, managing and maintaining its heretofore unintelligent electrical network, CURRENT will use the BPL equipment it installs to offer broadband services to more than 2 million TXU customers in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area, according to Jay Birnbaum, vice president and general counsel for CURRENT.

CURRENT has been operating a much smaller BPL network that provides some Smart Grid capability and offering broadband service to 50,000 customers in cooperation with Cincinnati’s Duke Energy Corp. for the past two years. However, the main purpose of the TXU BPL deployment will be to provide a showcase for the nation’s utilities that enables them to see just what BPL can do for them in terms of Smart Grid, says Birnbaum.

“The biggest issue we have is getting utilities to decide to do something different,” says Birnbaum.

TXU has directed its electrical meter vendor to BPL-enable 400,000 meters for installation on the network, says Birnbaum, adding that many utilities have told CURRENT they would deploy BPL if CURRENT would show them a BPL-enabled electric meter. Birnbaum says he told each utility CURRENT could get that done in six months’ time, but first the utility would have to go to its meter company and tell them they would buy such a meter.

“That’s because, right now, meter companies want utilities to buy their wireless meter,” he explains. “So, why would they go into the BPL space and cannibalize their own business? We had that chicken-and-egg thing, and I think we are overcoming it. The biggest issue we face now is showing other utilities that are interested in BPL that we will be able to do what we said we were going to do in Texas.”

Because it has none of the trappings of a communications network, deploying BPL-based and Smart Grid technology means building a communications infrastructure — and the network management processes that go with Smart Grid — from scratch, says Birnbaum. All this ground-floor level work has to be done to get BPL moving.

“The hard part, hopefully, is over. Now we have the perfect test bed to show other utilities how Smart Grid works,” says Birnbaum.

CURRENT is hoping the TXU network creates a snowball effect. Once they see it working, state public utility commissions could start urging other utilities in Texas and across the nation to start deploying BPL, he says. In fact, the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners recently passed a pro-BPL policy, he adds.

All of this is important to BPL for consumer/business broadband because only after BPL catches on with utilities for Smart Grid will third-party broadband providers such as CURRENT, or the utility companies themselves, begin using BPL-enabled electrical networks to deliver broadband services to consumers.



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