Entergy enters BPL world with Ambient pilot

    /24-7PressRelease/ - WASHINGTON, DC, December 14, 2006 -- Most BPL deployments worldwide have been -- and the few big ones started with -- a tire-kicking technology trial. Entergy's long anticipated foray into the BPL world is such a trial deployment with BPL technology firm Ambient.

Anticipated? The firm sent a team of engineers to just about every BPL conference we've covered. Despite the utility's limited initial commitment, the IOU's decision to move ahead after so many of its peers have taken a wait and see attitude supports the premise that BPL really is ready for prime time.

If BPL technology was basically flawed -- as some still seem to believe -- a firm as well informed about BPL as Entergy would arguably be unlikely to invest money and time in a deployment.

But then why is the firm starting with just a toe in the water? It may be excruciating for high-speed technology companies to accept -- but this is how big utilities work. Theirs is usually a long, slow decision process with many hurdles.

The BPL industry may have only just recently reached a point where one firm or another can handle an IOU-sized, footprint-wide order for gear. Vanguards in the US such as TXU, CenterPoint, Duke and the first big US utility to believe in BPL, Cinergy (now merged with Duke), pushed ahead -- but those few haven't triggered a landslide of band-wagoneers.

Around the globe, the big deployments are still too few to create much efficiency in the manufacturing supply chain. Yet the message seems to be sinking in. BPL is for real and it just takes some convincing up the ranks to get it going.

We believe that other 21st century grid technologies being installed now -- such as wireless AMR systems -- are a stopgap and will ultimately be replaced with BPL/fiber/line-of-site fixed wireless hybrid networks with very little reliance on wireless on the outer edge of the networks.

Why? Wireless is fun -- and we mean that professionally -- but it's often saddled with problems that utilities won't want to mess around with long term. BPL is reported again and again to be the most affordable and robust network medium under most network arrangements.

Entergy and Ambient engineers plan to show the IOU's own executives and the rest of the utility industry what the latest technology can do.

Entergy's big
Entergy is a Fortune 500 firm serving power to about 2.7 million customers in Arkansas, New Orleans and throughout Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. It's an integrated energy firm with about 30,000 megawatts of generation capacity and it's the second largest nuclear generator in the US.

The IOU's revenue is up near the top three utilities in the US for 2005 as listed at the Energy Information Administration's website. Entergy's utilities are listed separately in the EIA list but added up total US$7.5 billion.

Southern California Edison ($9.4 billion), Pacific Gas & Electric ($9.2 billion) and Florida Power & Light ($9.1 billion) top the list (www.eia.doe.gov/neic/rankings/revenue.htm).

The Entergy pilot will begin during the fourth quarter of this year, said Ambient, and will last six months at Entergy's West Markham office in Little Rock, Ark. Ambient will support Entergy in the design, management and maintenance of the BPL network. Entergy will make its substation and distribution facilities available to provide the power line links.

Doing triple-play?
The pilot will show off what BPL can do to enable the 21st century grid -- but triple play applications are planned, too, Ambient reported. "Entergy [is] one of the nation's most innovative electricity utility providers," said Ambient CEO John Joyce, who's been outspoken about his pickiness of utility partners.

To date Duke Power in Charlotte, NC, and Consolidated Edison in New York have been Ambient's leading utility partners. "We value the opportunity to work with utilities such as Entergy -- that validate the technology for further consideration of deploying -- for the purpose of better serving their customers.

"Ambient continues to work closely with select utilities to ensure the potential growth opportunities for Ambient and the industry in 2007 and beyond." BPL creates a two-way communications network with "the potential to change how a utility operates," reminded Ambient.

That means not just reading meters remotely but advanced metering capabilities. Those include real-time meter reads, locating outages before customers call and proactively monitoring the distribution system to find failing or over-burdened equipment before it causes outages.

Those applications "have significant benefits for utilities," Ambient reminded. "Our objectives in this pilot are to test the technology and its capabilities, validate the economics of deploying BPL and test the ability to use this technology to locate power outages, read electric meters and do remote switching of distribution equipment," explained Peter Lendrum, Entergy's vice president of sales and marketing.

"Ambient was selected after a thorough review process of the different BPL technologies available in the marketplace today.

"We felt Ambient's solution has some potential and are looking forward to appraising the results of this pilot program," he added. "Ambient is very selective in the utilities we choose to work with," said Ram Rao, CTO of Ambient. "Entergy's selection of a rural area for validating our technology was very important to us.

"To demonstrate the viability of bringing BPL to rural communities is a great opportunity.

"Ambient uses the very latest notching technology in its 2nd-generation products to mitigate any potential harmful interference to licensed spectrum users such as the amateur radio operators.

"We understand this is an important issue. We have and intend to continue to ensure we address all issues that arise," reported Rao. Ambient commended "Entergy and its utility partners for showing such progressive thinking by exploring BPL for smart grid applications as they migrate to next-generation distribution systems."

Ambient is a UPA member, the firm reminded, and its headquarters are in Newton, Mass.

For more information, please visit http://www.bpltoday.com/247press.html

About BPL Today
BPL Today's mission is to chronicle the broadband over power lines industry as power distribution networks built in the 20th Century are transformed into a 21st Century "smart grid" with high-tech utility automation, monitoring and controls plus a long awaited third broadband pipe into homes and businesses enabling a new world of voice, video and data applications.

Season Crawford
BPL Today
+1-202-298-8201
[email protected]

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