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 Previous: Building Strong Relationships Builds a Strong Club |  Next: IARU Administrative Council Adopts Three-Year Plan |
 BPL extractors like this one now are gone from poles in the Progress Energy BPL field trial system near Raleigh, North Carolina. [Gary Pearce, KN4AQ, Photo] |
NEWINGTON, CT, Oct 4, 2004--Progress Energy Corporation (PEC) has shut down its BPL field trial in the Raleigh, North Carolina, area and removed all system hardware. The utility's action last week came just as local amateur Tom Brown, N4TAB, had filed a Response and Further Complaint about the system with the FCC. Despite the system's shutdown--which he'd called for in his filing--Brown says he stands by his challenge to the FCC's determination last July that the utility's BPL system complied with Part 15 rules and that ham band notching was "effective."
"My suggestion that the FCC somehow measured what I measured and saw what I saw and reported something else still stands," he said. Brown said he'd send a letter to that effect to Bruce Franca of the FCC's Office of Engineering and Technology, and the other recipients of his recent complaint. Franca's July report had characterized the 24 dB average notch depths as "sufficient to eliminate any signals that would be deemed capable of causing harmful interference, including interference to amateur operations."
Progress Energy's approach to mitigating interference on amateur frequencies by avoiding--or notching--ham bands was, Brown said, "a failed attempt, regardless of what kind of face they want to put on it."
Brown maintained that the FCC's pronouncing a lack of
harmful interference based upon a power level 24 dB below Part 15 emission
limits "is immaterial." Part 15 is very clear, he said, that if unlicensed
devices operating under that section of FCC rules cause harmful interference,
it has to cease operation.
 In the early stages of the utility's two-phase BPL field trial, Progress Energy and its BPL partner Amperion cooperated with local amateurs to eliminate interference. [Gary Pearce, KN4AQ, Photo] |
"They [the FCC] measured it as a point source--it doesn't behave as a point source," Brown said of the BPL signals. "It behaves as a line source or a radiated source, and if you measure it and listen to it under those circumstances, you find exactly what I found--that you can drive a mile away from it and hear the same power level that you heard right at the injector." In its filings, the ARRL also has asserted that BPL is a line source, not a point source, radiator.
Despite the system's shutdown, Brown, who has an extensive background in RF engineering, says he doesn't believe amateurs in the vicinity of the Progress Energy BPL field trial wasted their time in monitoring the system and complaining about it.
"Collectively I think that the things we learned here will benefit us in a larger sense," he said, "in our ability to understand what some of these systems are capable of doing--having had the firsthand experience of listening to it and measuring it and seeing that it does, in fact, confirm physics." Should Progress Energy ever decide to get back into the BPL business, Brown added, he'd be happy to reconfirm his findings for them.
"I think they [Progress Energy] were aware that the problems had not been solved, and we weren't going to go away until they were solved," he said. Progress Energy reportedly has physically removed the BPL hardware from the power poles at the last of the three field trial sites. "The system's down, and I'm very pleased to see that," he commented. "It doesn't mean they [Progress Energy] won't do something later, but at least currently, it's SK."
The FCC is expected to consider a draft Report and Order in the BPL proceeding,
ET Docket 04-37, when the full Commission meets Thursday, October 14.
| Previous: Building Strong Relationships Builds a Strong Club | Next: IARU Administrative Council Adopts Three-Year Plan |
