All of the alternative ways you describe to accomplish remote meter reading
would require the power company to pay for 100% the equipment. With BPL, they
expect that the BPL customers will fund the majority of the equipment costs,
with the utility use of BPL coming along for little or no money. If the power
companies use it for utility control, they may also get away with rolling some
of the costs into their rate structure. That is why they are interested in BPL
and not interested in paying for cable or DSL to accomplish their control
objectives.
Don't discount that time-of-day meter reading. If it is successful in reducing
peak loads, that alone could be worth a lot of money to the utility companies.
Ed Hare, W1RFI
> -----Original Message-----
> From: rfi-bounces@contesting.com [mailto:rfi-bounces@contesting.com]On
> Behalf Of Dave Bernstein
> Sent: Friday, September 03, 2004 6:53 PM
> To: jimjarvis@comcast.net; rfi@contesting.com
> Subject: RE: [RFI] ECM...etc.
>
>
> If BPL gets deployed, we'll need some ECM.
>
> Since BPL advocates occasionally cite energy management as a rationale
> for deploying BPL, its a useful topic to understand. They don't push
> very hard on this, and I've never found anything substantive behind
> their references. I beginning to think its mostly smoke.
>
> Offering electricity users lower rates for off-peak usage would be a
> win-win for everyone, and requires only that the house meter be
> appropriately upgraded; being able to read this meter via the internet
> would save some labor costs and provide more convenient real-time
> readout to the consumer, but any network connection -- BPL, cable, or
> DSL -- could provide this. Pay-per-view satellite receivers use
> telephone lines to report usage information.
>
> 73,
>
> Dave, AA6YQ
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: rfi-bounces@contesting.com
> [mailto:rfi-bounces@contesting.com] On
> Behalf Of jimjarvis@comcast.net
> Sent: Friday, September 03, 2004 18:24
> To: rfi@contesting.com
> Subject: [RFI] ECM...etc.
>
>
> Sorry.
> Jetlagged. That was supposed to be EMC...as in electromagnetic
> compatibility. As opposed to ECM, which is electronic
> countermeasures.
>
> You make a good point about retrofitting appliances. I would suppose
> that being able to add wireless isolated metering/monitoring to the
> electric, gas, or water supply would be a pre-condition. Control of
> heating system and lighting, either automatically or remotely
> could have
> value for some
> I can't imagine that having appliances interfaced would add
> value to my
> life. Coffee maker? Frig? Stove? Interfaced pantry
> reporting stock
> levels of items and generating a shopping list? I don't think so.
> This is a major digression in one sense...but may be important to
> understanding what's driving the power industry's investment vision.
> I haven't read enough yet to see what their magic motive is for BPL.
> n2ea
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