In late 2005, TXU Electric Delivery (Dallas, Texas, U.S.) entered an agreement with CURRENT Communications Group, LLC, for the provider to design, build and operate a broadband-over-power-line (BPL) network covering the majority of the TXU Electric Delivery service area. Since the start of 2007, the utility reports that it has already had six confirmed cases of the BPL network alerting of grid-related issues prior to customers calling.

TXU Electric Delivery's objective over the next five to eight years is to automate every meter in its system, approximately 3 million meters. “We'll have the largest broadband-over-power-line network in the world operating on our system,” said Carol Peters, a spokesperson for TXU Electric Delivery. “It's a challenging objective, but Electric Delivery believes this is how grids will reach the next level of performance, through technology.”

In February 2007, the utility said that 10,000 BPL meters were going to be installed. And according to CURRENT, the network buildout is now well beyond that number.

Under the terms of the agreement, TXU Electric Delivery has procured services for 10 years for approximately US$150 million to use CURRENT's BPL technology on its power lines. The technology remains the property of CURRENT, and TXU Electric Delivery pays a fee to use that technology.

According to Peters, the utility isn't interested in selling to retail customers. “We believe the value of broadband-over-power-line deployment is in the bandwidth that we are able to use to develop new technologies to manage great performance,” Peters said.

Ultimately, the utility plans to leverage CURRENT's BPL technology to reach the exclusive top 10% of reliability nationally by 2011.

On a smaller scale, Duke Energy is another utility customer of CURRENT's, with a BPL deployment of 50,000 homes in Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S., and with plans for more in the works.