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Green telecom [Financial Express (India)](Financial Express (India) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) India is the second largest and fastest growing mobile telephone market in the world. On an average, more than ten million new subscriptions are added every month, the market grows by 23% each year and has now crossed 800 million. But telecom is also the second largest energy consumer in India after the Railways. Almost all of this consumption is unseen - small diesel generators running for hours to power transceivers on each cellphone tower and run air-conditioning units to keep equipment shelters cool. Generators are used because mobile operators are able to meet only 40% of their power requirements from grid electricity. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has issued a consultation paper on 'Green Telecommunications' in February this year and finalised its recommendations in April. These recommendations are likely to become part of the Telecom Policy. Trai suggests that in the next five years, at least 50% of rural towers and 33% of urban towers should be powered by hybrid energy (renewable energy technologies and grid power), while all rural towers and 50% of urban towers are to be powered by hybrid energy by 2020. The industry should place all its bets on alternative energy and wait till it becomes affordable to make for a viable solution. Until that happens, operators can focus on energy savings through efficient equipment and infrastructure. Energy efficient equipment: New generation equipment is not only more energy and space efficient but also has features that can cut down energy usage. Uninor's sites, for instance, have advanced functionalities like automatic shutdown of inactive transceivers. This saves energy when there is no activity on the network. Enhancing infrastructure efficiency: Most measures the industry can undertake today fall in this category. Some of these include: Infrastructure sharing: Passive sharing involves sharing of towers, shelter cabinets, power supply unit, air-conditioning unit, alarm systems etc. Just this can lead to significant energy savings. Active sharing would involve sharing of network infrastructure such as antennae systems, backhaul transmission systems, and base station equipment. Better cooling solutions: A large part of energy consumption at a tower comes from the use of air-conditioning to cool down shelters that house equipment. A lot can be done here. For starters, many of the 'indoor' transceivers (kept in air-conditioned shelters) can be converted to outdoor sites. New generation equipment with better temperature tolerance allows for this. For sheltered sites, green shelters can be deployed. These have better insulation resulting in lower solar gain and therefore lower air-conditioning needs. Similarly, Free Cooling Units, which utilise ambient temperature to cool down equipment, reduce dependence on air-conditioning. Uninor has conducted a pilot at 7,500 sites that shows up to a 30% reduction in energy consumption with the deployment of Free Cooling Units. Uninor is also exploring a unique concept of underground heat exchangers. These channelise the lower temperature of soil below the surface to cool down equipment at the top. This reduces power requirement at a site by 25-30Kw per day. Optimisation on diesel generator operation: It involves deployment of fuel catalyst to improve the efficiency of the combustion process. Together with its partner Viom, Uninor installed fuel catalysts at 4,500 pilot sites and proved energy savings of 8 to 10%. Substituting conventional diesel generators with DC direct generators sets removes the inefficiencies of converting AC to DC power and hence reduces overall fuel consumption. The big measure next is to deploy renewable energy - initially to complement conventional diesel, and gradually to become the main power source to run telecom networks. Solar is one of the most adoptable options. Though it has high investment costs, the energy savings make it a compelling option. From the pilot that Uninor has implemented, it is evident that solar panels reduce fuel costs by almost 30%. For adoption of greener technologies and energy sources, measures such as tax holidays, accelerated depreciation and targetted subsidies will encourage early adoption and scale. The writer is chief operating officer, Uninor. Views expressed are personal Copyright 2011 The Indian Express Online Media Ltd., distributed by Contify.com (c) 2011 The Indian Express Online Media Ltd., distributed by Contify.com |