[EIDXA] Biz Week on BPL

[Jim Spencer]

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From: N1OL
To: BPLandHamRadio at yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, November 16, 2004 8:33 AM
Subject: [BPLandHamRadio] Biz week on BPL



Good data on costs

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_47/b3909130_mz018.htm

Easy Broadband -- And Smarter Power
Web access from wall outlets is on the way, and utilities see even
more on the horizon

One day soon, getting a broadband connection at home could be as easy
as plugging a cord into an electrical outlet in the wall. The same
power lines that deliver electricity to light rooms and run
refrigerators will transport messages, music, and video across
cyberspace. To link up computers, music players, and TV set top boxes
in a home network, people will no longer have to mess with a tangle
of wires or Wi-Fi settings. Over the powerlines, they'll have the
convenience of plug-and-play -- something that still isn't readily
available from telephone or cable companies.

And yet, this is not the main reason many U.S. power companies are
exploring so-called broadband over powerline (BPL). Consolidated
Edison, Hawaiian Electric Co., Southern Co., and others are now
eagerly studying BPL's potential to help manage their core business
of supplying power. Taking advantage of the technology's fast two-way
communications paths, Hawaiian Electric, for example, is testing
whether it can get a better read on how customers use appliances.
During periods of peak demand, the utility could offer incentives to
families to ratchet back on air conditioning. All of this gives them
a greater return on their investment in BPL. "The industry has proven
the technology, but not the business case," says Clark W. Gellings, a
vice-president at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI). "If
you could use the same asset to deliver home-entertainment and
appliance monitoring to consumers, that's phenomenal."

Broadband via electrical wires is certainly a tantalizing idea since
nearly every home in the U.S. is served by power lines. What's more,
most residences are threaded with electrical wires terminating in
multiple outlets in almost every room. So homeowners can get a high-
speed Net connection -- up to 3 megabits per second -- just by
plugging a special modem into any outlet. That matches cable modem
speeds and outpaces most DSL offerings.

NEW SERVICES
The principle behind BPL is simple: Because electricity courses over
just the low-frequency portions of power lines, there's room for data
to stream over higher frequencies. For years, utilities have sent
basic network-maintenance data across their lines at relatively low
data rates. Now, by installing more sophisticated computer chips into
the network, they can send and receive fast data streams for more
high-bandwidth applications, such as real-time, always-on meter
reading. (Say good-bye to the friendly meter reader.) And for the
first time they can offer new customer services, such as voice-over-
Internet or even video on demand.

That, however, will require significant upgrades of utility
substations and power lines. And nobody knows exactly how big an
investment will be necessary. First, power companies have to mount
boxes on certain utility poles to deliver data signals. Early
estimates of installation costs range from $50 to $150 per home
passed, plus $30 to $200 more for modems in each home, according to a
study by EPRI and its consulting arm, Primen. Internet service
provider EarthLink Inc. (ELNK ), which is testing BPL schemes with
Con Edison, says that to make money from selling broadband access at
$20 to $30 a month, a utility may have to get installation costs down
to $20 per home passed and less than $100 per modem.

Given the challenges, utilities will welcome any cost savings from
improved energy management. By injecting intelligence into the
farthest reaches of the power system, utilities can monitor their
networks in ways never before possible. Currently, for example, power
companies don't know about local outages until customers report them.
With BPL systems watching the flow of data to individual homes, they
can pinpoint the neighborhoods without light. While testing
residential broadband service in Briarcliff Manor, N.Y. this summer,
Con Edison discovered that BPL could help detect impending faults. A
residential customer noticed that his Web service was slowing down.
Con Edison crews traced the problem to a cracked insulator on a pole
next to his house. Now the company is modeling normal circuit
conditions, then looking at even slight deviations to spot budding
problems on its systems. That's a far cry from periodic street
maintenance checks, which Con Edison and others mainly rely on today.

In an era of increasing power usage by computers and other digital
devices, many utilities are hoping BPL will bring them closer to an
elusive goal: demand management. To encourage conservation, power
companies would like to charge customers more during peak demand and
less at other times. To bill accordingly, they need to measure how
much power a home consumes every minute of the day. BPL could help by
taking constant measurements. Some experts argue that existing
approaches, using two-way pagers, are good enough and that new
wireless options are cheaper. But BPL proponents say their wires are
faster and more reliable.

Today the very idea of a smart electrical network is in its infancy.
But demand for cheap Web access is mounting and so is the need for
better power management. To satisfy both ends, utilities could
embrace broadband and bring the electrical system into the Internet
Age.

By Catherine Yang in Washington





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