Qwest partners into smart grid play

Qwest Communications (NYSE: Q) has partnered with Current Communications on a smart-grid offering for utility companies that combines the former’s DSL network with the latter’s broadband-over-powerline (BPL) technology.

Current Communications – which has in the past tried and failed to make a viable business out of consumer broadband service delivered to the home over powerlines – is now using the same technology to target the emerging smart-grid market and is using Qwest mainly to backhaul data from the home to the utility company.

Qwest and Current announced today that they have been trialing their integrated BPL/DSL approach for Xcel Energy in Boulder, Colo., in recent months and now plan to market it to other energy firms.
Current’s technology communicates along power lines in the home, measuring power consumption and allowing more efficient energy management for utility firms and consumers alike. The data it uses is aggregated and reported by intelligent sensors deployed on neighborhood telephone poles or in multidwelling units that are connected via power lines to each residence. Qwest installs a DSL circuit to the “main or head sensor” in each neighborhood and transmits their data via DSL lines from those sensors to centralized utility control centers across town.  

That DSL backhaul is useful because BPL technology works well across the short distances in the neighborhood but can’t easily make the long trip across a city or regional powerline network.

“Their solution works very well over low and medium voltages,” said Travis Leo, Qwest’s broadband product director. “Where all powerline technologies run into challenges is backhauling information to a command center over a public or private network.”

Utility firms could deploy their own wireline or wireless networks, but outsourcing to a provider like Qwest is quicker and cheaper, Leo said. And Qwest’s DSL network is already extensively deployed in residential areas.

Qwest says it wants to offer the same integrated smart-grid offering to other utility companies within its residential broadband footprint (DSL and FTTN).

Leo wouldn’t quantify the size of the Boulder trial for which it began installations in January beyond saying it applied to “a couple neighborhoods” and was “substantial.”

Partnering with Current gets Qwest into the potentially very lucrative smart-grid market relatively quickly, but in theory, it also appears to relegate Qwest to a transport role and deny the carrier its own opportunity to offer home energy management services directly. Leo doesn’t see it that way.

“I don’t see those as being mutually exclusive at all,” he said. “There’s certainly different value propositions. As we may look to deploy home-energy solutions in the future, we certainly want to partner with companies that are in that space today. If I were to think about wanting a smart energy solution, my first thought would be, ‘Who’s the utility in my area? I’m going to go talk to them.’ Whether the customer wants to come to Qwest or wants to go to Xcel, we want to be in that space to catch this wave.”

Qwest’s move follows AT&T’s announcement in March of a partnership with SmartSynch to target smart grid opportunities.