Abstract
This report describes a multi-year effort by the town of Concord, Massachusetts, to establish a robust and versatile communications infrastructure to better serve its citizens. The town’s municipal utility, Concord Municipal Light Plant, or CMLP, built a 100-mile fiber optic network as a backbone for a smart grid, and then used the network to deliver high-speed Internet access to homes and businesses, competing with Comcast. With the fiber installed, the town realized significant savings on municipal communications costs and generated new fiber-leasing revenue. CMLP recently launched a strategic planning effort to use the smart grid network and the data it generates to reduce peak power demand and costs, and to reduce systemwide greenhouse gas emissions. CMLP may earn additional revenue by allowing the New England transmission system to use parts of CMLP’s smart grid to balance regional electricity loads. And Concord now has the potential to expand its Internet access business beyond town boundaries, starting in neighboring Acton.
Highlights
By the end of 2016 Concord Municipal Light Plant (CMLP) was serving about 750 customers with service of up to 200 Mbps upload and download
CMLP turned to the possibility of building a fiber loop as the backbone of a smart grid, improving reliability and laying the foundation for more efficient and less wasteful electricity service while allowing the town to provide Internet access service and other benefits
A smart grid uses two-way communications units, CMLP saw another use for a smart grid
Summary
Residents of Concord, Massachusetts, have a history of triggering important initiatives in geopolitics, American literature, and municipal fiber optic infrastructure. The project started in 2009 when voters authorized the town’s municipally owned electric utility (Concord Municipal Light Plant, or CMLP) to build the network as part of a $3.9 million smart grid able to support control and sensor systems that can improve reliability, reduce costs, and control peak-hour energy consumption. In a second step, CMLP established a telecommunications division, called Concord Light Broadband, and borrowed $600,000 to fund startup costs of an Internet access business and fiber connections to customers. The project is still being built: at the end of 2016, Concord Light Broadband served about 750 customers (a “take rate” of about 12 percent of the 6,000 customers CMLP estimates could take service) and earned 2016 revenue of $560,000, slightly less than operating costs of $583,000. The utility is engaged in studies on how to use the infrastructure to realize more cost savings, increase revenue, provide new services, and reduce emissions in the coming decades
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