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Technology Stocks : DSSI/DATA Systems & Software
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To: Omer Shvili who wrote (467)3/23/1998 10:06:00 PM
From: nuf  Read Replies (1) of 1061
 
Omer, there are a few things that you did not consider in your analysis of Comverge. I'm not saying they won't be successful because I really think they could. Simply that meter reading is a complex business and that price is only one piece of the puzzle that leads a utility to choose a company to read its meters.

Functionality is an equally large part. The PLC technology that you were describing has a number of issues that must be dealt with. Primarily, transmission speeds over a power line network are painfully slow. When combined with the enormous ratio of meters/concentrator that you cited Comverge will only be able to read meters daily (if that). The company's competitors can read meters as frequently as every five minutes. Frequent reads allow you to do cool things like time of use, demand and real time metering. All utilities in the United States make their commercial and industrial customers use some form of advanced metering that can do the above. As deregulation occurs, there will more and more residential consumers on these rate plans as well.

Comverge, with its PLC solution, can do t.o.u. and demand by installing new (expensive) meters. For a commercial and industrial meter it'll run about $400. For residential I've seen price estimated in articles at $100. To get a true idea about price you need to look at the solution from end to end.

The reason I think that Comverge could be successful, though, has to do with the technology they licensed from Lucent. I am not as knowledgeable about Lucent's solution as I'd like to be, but I think they might be able to lick the problems I've mentioned by using an alternative LAN. If there's anybody out there that knows about Lucent's solution it'd be great to hear.
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