Solar Solutions for telecom Cell Sites

Cell phone Telecom Towers would soon be running on solar energy, if the ministries of renewable energy and telecommunications have their way. The two ministries recently announced plans to get telecom tower operators to use solar power to operate their towers.

India currently has more than 650,000 cell phone towers, which consume about 5 billion litres of diesel per year. Each tower consumes an average 5 kilowatts of power and the consumption increases with the number of telecom operators using the tower.
The move from diesel to solar and other alternate sources of energy will result in a reduction of 5 million tons of CO2 emissions as well as a savings of $1.4 billion in operating expenses (opex) for telecom tower companies.

“Tower costs comprise 30% of opex for a company. It makes sense especially in rural and semi-urban areas where electricity supply is not reliable. Even if they save 5% of opex, that’s huge,” a telecom sector expert at KPMG India".

GTL Infra,VIOM,Bharti infra,Indus Towers, which has total of 2,32,500 telecom towers, has already started moving from diesel to solar off Grid site solutions and other alternate sources of energy like Fuel cell, wind power and Hybrid solutions.

“Yes there is a message in that regard. We have completed solar-enablement of about 7,000 of our towers in the last 2-3 months. Others will also happen. Ultimately, the aim is to move about 75% of our towers on solar energy, especially the ground base stations. We have already placed the purchase order for solar panels,

The largest tower firm in India is Indus Towers, a joint venture between Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Essar and Idea Cellular, which has a little over 125,000 towers. Reliance Infratel has around 70,000, and Bharti Infratel has 35,000 towers.

Incidentally Airtel used to be the second-largest buyer of diesel after Indian Railways till 2007.

“Bharti used to be the second-largest buyer of diesel in India till 2007 (Indian Railways is the number one buyer), when it spun off its cellular towers into a separate entity —- Indus Towers. Bharti did not want to be worried about owning diesel towers anymore. This allowed Bharti to not only better predict and control costs, but also focus its energies on marketing, new business development and service innovation.

Bharti Airtel Africa/ India has already started a pilot projects to evaluate the savings by moving from diesel to solar-based energy sources.
“We have been asked to provide solar panels for 20 Airtel towers initially as a pilot project. Once they are convinced of major DG savings,” said a source in Delhi-based Acme Tele, which provides alternate energy resources to telecom firms.

“ Continuous electricity availability is an issue in many parts of Indian and African countries. Moreover, Airtel and other other operators will look to curtail costs there,” the major source said.

GTL Infra ,ATC, VIOM, Indus and Acme Tele have adopted the strategy of making the investment and then realising it from clients.Service operators in India have now planned to implement solar sites solutions on Opex model and therefore EPC vendors with strong presence in India


“These projects are mostly for places where the electric supply is not reliable. So once we get the order for 1,000 sites, we shall be investing in the infrastructure and Airtel would pay us based on the annual savings of electricity we provide them,” the source from Acme Tele said.

The companies are hoping the government will soon disburse the subsidy of 50% on solar panels as announced in the Union budget. “Each solar panel costs about Rs 15 lakh. If the government gives the subsidies sooner, we would be able to roll out faster. However, we hear that from April 1, 30% of subsidy will be disbursed,

“We are going to generate within the first three years 1,300 mw of solar energy with 1,100 grid-connected and 200 non-grid connected (plants). By 2022, we should have 22,000 mw of solar power,” Union minister for new and renewable energy.Recently quoted .