May 26–Leasing space for cell phone companies to broadcast their signals from public property allows local governments to add revenue to their general funds, city officials said.

In some cities, it’s the difference between having one more police officer or firefighter.

The cities of Hamilton and Middletown annually gross a combined $80,000 in lease agreements with cell phone companies.

In Middletown, Marty Kohler, planning director, said the city has agreements with Sprint, Verizon and Cincinnati Bell to use public space.

Annually, the city collects about $55,000 from the lease agreements. Kohler said with each new five-year term, the monthly rent increases 10 percent.

“Fifty-five thousand dollars is a significant amount of money; that’s a police officer or an entry-level firefighter for use of city property that’s not otherwise gaining revenue,” Kohler said.

In Hamilton, Jim Collins, director of underground utilities, said the city has two agreements with Cincinnati Bell for cell towers on the Eaton Road water tower and at Potter’s Park Golf Course.

Collins said about $25,000 is made annually for the city’s water and golf funds. But over the life of the 30-year contracts, the city will get about $764,000 from Cincinnati Bell.

Monthly rents negotiated in the 2006 original contracts are $1,110 for space at Potter’s Park on Hamilton New London Road, and $1,000 per month for space on the water tank in the 1800 block of Eaton Road, city documents say.

Collins said Hamilton has two other water towers and is building its fourth. He said no other space is rented on towers for cell signals. “We prefer (companies) don’t go there (on water towers) because we have our antennas there and there can be interference,” Collins said.

Municipalities commonly place communication systems — for police and fire emergency services and utilities — atop water towers, city officials say.

Kohler said after Middletown tore down one of its water towers on Breiel Boulevard, officials from Verizon agreed to build a cell tower on the land and allow the city free use of it for communication antennas.

Sprint also leases space on the cell tower.

“It’s common to have co-locations on towers because it’s hard in dense locations to find desirable locations,” Kohler said.

Using public property is cheaper a for cell phone companies than securing easements and building their own antennas.

Christine Demeropolis, spokeswoman for Verizon Wireless, said the company’s process is “intensive” for determining the possible need and best location for a cell tower. She said the company considers the type of cell tower and the height needed.

“In suburban and urban areas, we focus more on meeting the need for increased capacity instead of filling in gaps in the coverage footprint,” Demeropolis said.

Verizon Wireless will make agreements with both public entities and private businesses.

“We do like to go with public space when possible because the relationship ultimately helps everyone in the community, versus a single resident or business,” Demeropolis said.

Gary Sheets, Butler County assistant administrator, said there are no cellular providers or other private uses of the 10 towers built by the county in its 800-megahertz countywide radio system.

He said the county once had a two-year agreement with the now-defunct Innovative Fiber Optic Solutions to pay $300 per month for a plot of land on the roof of the Government Services Building. He said $7,000 was made.

“We have been approached many times by companies about wanting to lease space,” he said.

But Sheets said the county is required to undergo bidding after declaring any tower space for private rent as “surplus” property not needed for public purposes.

“We have explored this possibility over and over but it is fraught with legalities,” Sheets said.

___

(c)2012 the Dayton Daily News (Dayton, Ohio)

Washington, DC—Utilities and other critical infrastructure took a further step toward gaining shared access to 700 MHz public safety broadband spectrum. Congress has reportedly agreed to include spectrum provisions within the conference report on the payroll tax, unemployment benefits and Medicare reimbursement, and those spectrum provisions would allow public safety to share access to the 700 MHz public safety broadband network under covered lease agreements that permit non-public safety users access to network capacity on a secondary basis for non-public safety services. The conference report is expected to be passed by Congress this week and signed by President Obama.

Connie Durcsak, President and CEO of the Utilities Telecom Council (UTC), stated that “UTC is pleased that Congress has included provisions that clear the way for public safety to share access to the 700 MHz broadband spectrum with utilities and other critical infrastructure industries (CII). UTC looks forward to passage of the legislation and working with the public safety community to promote sharing with utilities and other CII, which will promote emergency response, accelerate the deployment of 700 MHz public safety broadband networks and support national policy objectives, such as energy independence and security.”

Sharing public safety spectrum with utilities and CII promotes emergency response, particularly during hurricanes and other natural disasters when power, water and other essential services need to be restored. As the FCC’s National Broadband Plan found, utilities and public safety have similar communications needs, including reliable communications during emergency response scenarios. In addition, utilities and CII can help accelerate the deployment of 700 MHz public safety broadband networks because they have extensive infrastructure and other resources to contribute. Indeed, utilities and public safety have successfully shared other spectrum bands in several states across the country.

As the founder and leading member of the Critical Infrastructure Communications Coalition (CICC), UTC continues to work with other energy, water and transportation associations to carry the message to Congress and federal agencies that private communications networks play an important role in protecting the reliability and resiliency of the nation’s electric grid and the availability of clean water, especially following emergencies when many of the public communications networks are inoperable. The need for reliable communications networks is growing exponentially with the modernization of the grid. UTC congratulates its members and other industry associations that contributed in the effort toward this significant achievement.

Utility telecommunications is integral to reliable and secure utility services. UTC is the premier trade association navigating the convergence of telecommunications, operations and information technology to identify, innovate and enable mission critical solutions for essential utility services. Since 1948, UTC is the source and resource for information and communications technology (ICT) solutions, collaboration and advocacy for utilities and other critical infrastructure industries.

Citadel Shield is an annual exercise designed to ensure United States Navy security forces maintain a high level of response readiness to threats. Part of the exercises was to see whether San Diego Navy and Marine Corps installations could reduce electrical consumption during an electricity curtailment period.

Capt. James Wink, NAVFAC Smart Power Partnership Initiative (SPPI) West Coast project lead explains, “The test was part of the Secretary of the Navy’s Smart Power Partnership Initiative which will help the Navy improve energy security and reduce energy costs through increased use of renewable energy sources and partnership with power producers and regulators.”

Twenty-two buildings at Naval Base San Diego, Naval Base Coronado, and Marine Corps Air Station were chosen for the test.

Wink adds: “During the exercise period, three levels of increasing demand reduction were tested. All demand control systems worked perfectly and energy reduction data is being analyzed to help the Navy determine the feasibility of participating in demand reduction programs in the future.”

In addition to testing the Smart Grid capabilities, the Navy also operated a power plant at NBC during the period of maximum curtailment, to take 2.4 MW off the grid.

Capt. Clifford Maurer, NAVFAC Southwest commanding officer says the exercise “demonstrated a Department of the Navy capability to control electrical loads and respond to a notional curtailment period. As we head into the summer cooling season the lessons learned from this experiment will allow us to better respond to real world curtailment events. The control systems all worked very well, but for a program like this to be successful in the long term it is imperative that all hands do their best to reduce energy consumption on a daily basis.”

Katherine Tweed

Two months into 2012 and the municipal and cooperative utility market has already been a steady subject of conversation in smart grid circles.

The North American investor-owned utility is shrinking, which is prompting vendors to take a look at the munis and coops. The contracts are smaller, but there are thousands of utilities to court.

Although the market is attractive, munis are proving to be savvy customers that often can’t shoulder large costs without a guaranteed payback for the utility’s specific needs. The City of Palo Alto is a perfect example.

It wants to be a state-of-the-art utility that can provide energy savings, demand response, distribution automation and tiered pricing for electric vehicles, but it simply cannot justify the cost of electric smart meters, or even full-blown distribution automation projects at this time. On the other hand, it already enjoys high reliability, is employing feed-in tariffs and consumer-facing energy efficiency programs, like Opower reports. Any added bang will have to be worth its buck.

“One of the big cost drivers is the integration of the backend system,” said Shiva Swaminathan, who works with the City of Palo Alto Utilities.

The total AMI system for the city’s water, gas and electricity was estimated between $23.4 million to $35.2 million over 20 years, while the payback was only estimated at $18.5 million to $27.7 million, according to a report released recently by the city. The MDM cost was estimated at 40 percent of the AMI implementation costs, or about $6 million total.

A distribution automation system, including an outage management system integrated with a geographic information system would have cost $3 million, but the economic benefit was estimated at $2.7 million.

Of course, every single utility is different, so business cases cannot be compared on an apples-to-apples basis. But for cities that already have reliable power and relatively happy customers and other energy efficiency programs, smart grid plans will likely stay in the wings for at least another year or two. Palo Alto is also unique in that it is the only city in California with a utility that delivers gas, electric and water.

Being in the wings is also not the same as being shelved altogether. The report, which was produced by EnerNex for Palo Alto, outlines various pilots, including an electric vehicle time-of-use rate pilot, commercial demand response and a residential customer in-home display and smart meter pilot. Swaminathan said that the city is moving ahead with an EV pricing pilot, as customers are asking for differentiated pricing schemes. Nothing has been finalized, but the city is hoping to start a pilot this summer. The city estimates there are between 75 and 100 EVs in Palo Alto.

The city is also focusing on upgrading and future-proofing its gas and water meters as they need replacing as part of the regular maintenance plans. New meters will be retrofitable with radios that can in turn talk to smart meters.

Cost is the main driver for Palo Alto to be delaying any larger smart grid plans, but as metering costs come down and companies offer more comprehensive packages of MDM packages with their meters, Palo Alto does plan on moving forward with smart grid.

Larger acquisitions, such as that of eMeter by Siemens and SmartSynch by Itron, are attractive to some munis that are looking for one-stop shopping with holistic solutions. In Palo Alto’s case, it is also looking for a system that can interface with the SAP platform it is already using.

Cloud-based meter data management, which is being offered by various MDM vendors, is also attractive to smaller utilities that cannot pay the large costs of servers. Swaminathan said Palo Alto was keeping an eye on mergers and cloud-based services as it thinks about smart grid. The city is planning on putting forward an RFP for a smart electric meter pilot later this year, although the vendor it picks will need to do a whole lot more than just electric metering.

“The barrier is large to overcome because we’re a three-commodity utility, s

In addition, having a reliable water supply and a means of treating wastewater before returning it to the environment are necessary to economic development. Rehabilitating and replacing that very infrastructure produces jobs. The U.S. Department of Commerce has estimated that every dollar spent on water infrastructure generates $2.62 in the private economy. For every job added to the water workforce, about 3.68 jobs are added nationally.

In February 2012, AWWA released its latest report on drinking water infrastructure needs, “Buried No Longer: Confronting America’s Water Infrastructure Challenge.” This report reveals that the country will need to spend $1 trillion over the next 25 years to maintain our current level of water service. This figure does not account for above-ground infrastructure or improvements to water treatment necessary to meet new standards. Nor does it include wastewater infrastructure needs, which have been shown to be as large as drinking water needs.

Financing Water Infrastructure

AWWA and WEF have long believed that Americans are best served by water and wastewater systems that are self-sustaining through rates and other local charges. However, we recognize that at present, some communities need assistance due to hardships or special economic circumstances. In addition, the need to replace or upgrade existing infrastructure may require access to a large amount of capital in a relatively short time frame, placing great stress on local rates and charges.

Although 95 percent of spending on water and wastewater has been from local sources, the federal government can play an important role by lowering the cost of capital for water and wastewater investments. Almost 70 percent of American communities use bonds to finance local infrastructure. They pay billions of dollars in interest costs each year. Lowering the cost of borrowing for water and wastewater infrastructure is an important way to leverage local funding and help America rebuild and rehabilitate our aging water infrastructure.

The Water Infrastructure Finance Innovation Act

Congressman Bob Gibbs, chair of the House Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment, is actively addressing water infrastructure finance issues. He held a hearing on Feb. 28 to look at innovative finance tools and is now preparing to introduce a Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (WIFIA). The act would create a finance mechanism modeled after the successful Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovations Authority (commonly called TIFIA) and provide access to lower-cost capital for investments in water infrastructure. This mechanism would have no or little long-term effect on the federal budget deficit. As in TIFIA, WIFIA would, under the Federal Credit Reform Act, only require appropriated funding sufficient to cover the subsidy cost, or risk, of loans. Fitch Ratings, a top credit rating agency, calculates that the historical default rate on water bonds is 0.04 percent. Indeed, water service providers are among the most fiscally responsible borrowers in the United States. Moreover, those states that leverage their SRF programs all have AAA or AA bond ratings and no history of defaults, placing them among the strongest credits in the country.

WIFIA would access funds from the U.S. Treasury at Treasury rates and use those funds to support loans and other credit mechanisms for water projects at or near Treasury rates. Although interest fluctuates, such rates are currently better than municipal bond rates. The benefit to local communities of lower interest rates is significant. Lowering the cost of borrowing by 2.5 percent on a 30-year loan reduces the lifetime project cost by almost 26 percent, the same result as a 26-percent grant. WIFIA loans would be repaid to the Authority, and then to the Treasury, with interest. Consequently, WIFIA would involve minimal risks and minimal long-term costs to the federal government because it would involve loans that are repaid.

The Water Infrastructure Finance Innovations Act would create a mechanism to:

Offer loans, loan guarantees and other credit support for large water infrastructure projects and those with national or regional importance. These projects often find it difficult or impossible to access loans from the existing SRF program, due in part to inadequate capitalization of the SRFs.
Reduce the cost of leveraging for SRF programs by lending to them directly. A federal water infrastructure finance authority could lend to those SRFs wishing to leverage their capitalization grants at the lowest possible interest rates. This would allow SRFs to make more loans and would increase their ability to offer special assistance to hardship communities if they chose to do so. Currently, 31 states leverage their SRF programs on the bond markets.

America faces the need to begin a significant and sustained increase in its investment in water and wastewater infrastructure, or risk deteriorating services. The tenets outlined in this paper provide a path towards truly sustainable water infrastructure for all Americans.

Incorporating the smart meters, now being installed by utility companies, to communicate through the cities wireless network and back to the data center acting as the nucleus of the community.  As population increases the need for a more efficient distribution and management system for electrical energy becomes exponentially more important. With the unified telecom/ utilities network developed, the idea of a “Smart Grid” controlling and monitoring the ebbs and flows of city wide electricity usage moves closer to a reality.

iWire365 commands a broad range of abilities from application and web development through iWire Labs, wireless survey and network installation for event venues and PMP certified project management.

Matt Leach, Director of Marketing
(214)929-3769
Matt.Leach@interconnect365.com
www.Interconnect365.com

The organization will remain a wireless telecommunication integrator, the mission will stay the same and strategic partnerships built in past years continue on strong; however the business will now be operating under the name iWire365.

“Texas A&M University Corpus Christi and iWire365 have developed iWire Labs. iWire Labs the culmination of years of experience and expertise as well represents significant future growth for iWire365. As a result of the mentioned activities and initiatives the company was acquired and restructured.” President and CEO William Hadala commenting on new name of company.

iWire365 and Interconnect365 are still one in the same and will continue to serve it’s clients, partners and prospects.

Matt Leach, Director of Marketing
(214)929-3769
Matt.Leach@interconnect365.com
www.iwire365.com

In my last IssueAlert (Utilities at the Dawn of a New Era), I offered three predictions for 2012. First, dual-track Smart Grid will see Smart Grid discussion and concepts divided into two diverging paths. Current utility-centric Smart Grid includes grid modernization, AMI, distribution automation, peak power reduction, and new technology integration. An emerging consumer-centric perspective focuses on voluntary interruption of service (what utilities call demand response) and distributed energy resources (DER), a term that includes four technology areas: smart buildings (energy efficiency, etc.), smart transportation (electric vehicles, charging stations, etc.), distributed generation (solar PV, CHP, etc.), and energy storage. Second, distributed energy services (DES) and solutions will emerge to leverage and improve on stand-alone DER technology product offers. Micro grids represent the most comprehensive DES solution and when operated interdependently with utilities constitute one version of a virtual power plant (VPP). Third, data analytics-driven products and services will reflect the growing utility resource of interval data flowing from smart meters, but also advances in technology that enable new data analytics solutions.

As we transition to a new year, we see Smart Grid players leveraging these trends for competitive advantage. GE, for instance, has been in the news this month with a new offer in place with two customers – Grid IQ: Solutions as a Service – that combines the traditional set of Smart Grid offers (Track One above) with new cloud service and data analytics capabilities. Imagine similar solutions for Track Two, the consumer-perspective: Distributed-Energy-as-a-Service (DEaaS) solutions, based on recent technology advances that enable a new wave of distributed energy solutions provided by new waves of energy competitors. Third parties representing specific DER technologies (armed with the competitive advantage of new perspectives) are likely to develop offers, combining technologies with data analytics to enable more compelling consumer value propositions, similar to what GE is providing for utilities. Knowledgeable consultants and entrepreneurs are capable of developing compelling DES solutions, even offering new applications on a distributed platform. Quadruple Bypass describes this potential new trend, where third parties offer compelling value from the four DER categories and bypass the traditional utility channel, taking their DES solutions directly to building owners and home owners, local governments, school districts, chambers of commerce, neighborhood groups, etc.

Utility transformation to a digital platform and data driven processes will take decades – technologies will inevitably progress faster than utilities, which will produce altogether new challenges for the electric utility industry and for society going forward. As utilities study technologies at their own pace, evaluating impacts on reliability, security and integration issues, consumers will grow impatient for access to solutions to current problems associated with grid power (e.g., outages, rate increases, etc.). And over the decades it will take to transform our fundamental electric infrastructure, utilities will endure inescapable long-term stress, given the growing complexity and increasing pace of change. For those most advanced utilities, already adapting and accepting new roles for themselves, new problems like data management, organizational realignment, security strategy and consumer engagement will become their reward. Other utilities are more likely to optimize their grid than develop DER, pursuing the First Track of utility-centric Smart Grid and providing limited attention to consumer-centric solutions. And for the many others who continue to hold back and resist change, they are likely to find no refuge in sticking to tradition, as the burden to add new skill sets and upgrade infrastructure will remain and grow as time moves along. Delaying competitive adaptation – staying still – in a highly dynamic environment will only mean falling still further behind.

As we evaluate these emerging trends, a key question to ask is “Will utilities adapt to provide energy services even if they dilute their grid-delivered kWh revenue?” Clayton Christenson’s Innovator’s Dilemma, a well-recognized theory on the impacts of disruptive technology, offers insights on what many readers may find familiar. An established company struggles to innovate; status quo business is good and embracing challenging disruptive innovations is counter-intuitive, maybe even involving cannibalization of existing revenues. Moving slowly and delaying innovation, the established company leaves a gap in the product or services market that smaller more flexible companies step in to fill with lower quality or incomplete solutions. Established companies may initially dismiss these small fry as inconsequential, but as these small companies build on their beachhead, growing and improving their offer and service quality, they grow their market share until they become significant competitors to the established company.

The degree to which utilities see new DER and DES revenue as a viable alternative will help determine whether DEaaS becomes a disruptor or whether it grows into an alternative utility revenue stream. Utilities have a range of alternatives for dealing with disruptive technologies, from avoidance, to tolerance, to becoming a distributor of third party services, to providing designer energy services in-house. Quadruple Bypass enables today’s energy consumers to make their buildings more efficient and lower their bills and to adopt natural gas-fueled combined heat and power and on-site solar PV. As technology matures, new electric vehicle technologies and energy storage alternatives will join the mix. Consumers may repeat this Energy by Design approach in iterative cycles as technology proliferates and as prices continue to fall. Increasingly more energy consumers can logically be expected to pursue savings and greater reliability, enjoying a virtuous cycle of lower cost and risk. But as they do so, they reduce their grid power purchases – the potential dilutive impacts of DEaaS are real. The question remains to what extent DEaaS is taken seriously today by utilities, and how they view their alternatives.

John Cooper, co-author of The Advanced Smart Grid, has recently joined the team at UtiliPoint and its sister company, Consonus, to further the goals and realize the vision he developed over the last 15 years as a Smart Grid pioneer and innovator, captured in this compelling and highly useful new book.