Energy Efficiency Push in Congress, States Seen Driving BPL
The BPL industry sees a big opening in a push in Congress and the states for improved energy efficiency and power grid reliability, officials said. With provisions of the 2005 Energy Act urging states to consider requiring utilities to install automated meters so customers can price energy in “real-time,” manage electricity and perform other such tasks, many state PUCs are starting proceedings, they said. “To the extent the states come back and say we want to do that, then it opens up another opportunity for BPL,” Brett Kilbourne, regulatory dir. of the United Power Line Council (UPLC), said. The business is so promising even phone companies like AT&T are jumping in, said Roger Gale of the Galvin Electricity Initiative (GEI).
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BPL is ideal for ensuring reliability in an aging utility distribution infrastructure because it can monitor the health of power lines underground and overhead -- not possible with Wi-Fi and other wireless technologies, said Kilbourne. Among states that have finished proceedings are Tex. and Cal., which is requiring power companies to install “smart meters.” With efficiency and reliability getting a “lot of play” in Congress and state regulators set to examine the issue, “we do see a significant uptick of interest” among utilities in BPL, said Jay Birnbaum, gen. counsel of Current Communications, which is deploying BPL for TXU Energy in Tex.
States and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) share the job of ensuring power grid reliability, said Mich. PSC Comr. Laura Chappelle, who headed NARUC’s BPL Task Force. “BPL could be one aspect of helping reliability, although it is in the early stages,” she told us. Most BPL deployments are pilots or small programs, producing scant empirical data on the technology’s use in grid reliability, she said. The Mich. PSC, like other state commissions, likely will study automated meter reading and other applications with “some proceedings or questions,” Chappelle said, noting that the “really smart meters” are very expensive.
She said BPL could benefit from the push for energy efficiency and reliability if industry “keep[s] on having a good game plan” and “as long as they are focused on their core competence.” She said the utilities are “smart,” not “seeking to take on the AT&Ts of the world” but going about their business in a “very non-threatening manner.” She even could see big telecoms teaming with BPL providers, she said. “That would really jumpstart and spur [BPL], especially in rural areas where it is hard for telecom providers to get out and you already had electric lines.”
It’s “counterintuitive” to expect utilities to invest in smart grid tools, since it would mean they make less money, Birnbaum said: “Utility companies take all the risk but they don’t get any of the upside benefits. They are better off investing in generation plants because they make a rate of return on that.” That’s why state and federal lawmakers are looking at bills to create incentives for utilities to embrace technologies to ensure efficiency and reliability, he said.
GEI’s Gale, who authored a study on the tech industry’s push into management of energy use and efficiency, said Cisco, Intel, HP and other tech companies and telcos like AT&T are moving into energy efficiency independent of utilities. The issue for utilities, which historically aren’t “fast-moving,” is that they make money selling more, not less, electricity, Gale said, noting that telecoms have no such incentives. The “ambitious” new AT&T Remote Monitor project can be expanded to do remote electricity and appliance management functions, he said: “That’s where we see more traction … and not through power line capabilities.”