Indian telecom operator Tata Teleservices covers the entire country though 50,000 mobile sites / towers of different tower operators. The network energy cost of these towers is one of the major components amounting to about 30 percent of the total telecom network cost.
Energy cost consists of two components-electricity charges of grid power and diesel consumption for running Diesel Generator (DG) set when there is no grid power. The cost of running a diesel generator (DG) is much higher than the cost of electricity provided by electricity board.
The energy costs depends on parameters including type and power consumption of the electronics, the number of tenants at the site with their consumptions, the efficiencies of the passive infrastructure elements, type of the telecom equipment like indoor (ID) or outdoor type (OD), the quality and availability of grid power, the available battery backup hours, the ambient temperature, per KWH grid unit rate and the diesel per liter rate.
Saji Mathew, vice president, Tata Teleservices, said the telecom service provider started the Project Optimus in 2010 with the formation of cross functional team ‘the Applied Research Team’ to work on various areas to reduce the operational expenses of the network. The infrastructure required, which is considered a passive element, was the core component which was to be reduced. This department was responsible for developing customized solutions working closely with vendors, carrying out proof of concept implementations (prototype and pilot projects) and developing models for rollouts and monitoring implementation.
The challenges of project execution are space availability for Indoor to outdoor conversion, landlord permission, infrastructure (IP) operator permissions.
Till date Tata Teleservices has achieved an annualized Opex savings to the tune of more than Rs 98 crore and annualized carbon savings of 80K TCO2e.
Scalable green telecom project
Company – Indoor to outdoor BTS Conversion – OD Cabinet + Free Cooling Units (FCU) – Estimated savings in Grid – 67865MWH, diesel – 8436KL. Annualized reduction in CO2e emission – 79871TCO2e.
Solar alternate energy solution – Estimated savings of diese l- 257KL. Annualized reduction in CO2e emission – 687TCO2e.
Community – DG set running reduction decreased the air and noise pollution due to exhaust gases and DG running, issues related to diesel pilferage, reduction in diesel consumption and lower FOREX impact and overall benefit to the community by reduction in carbon emissions.
Environment – commitment of Tata Teleservices to environment and energy efficiency goes all way back when TTL promoted the concept of telecom passive Infrastructure sharing to India with a dual responsibility of Intelligent solutions to reduce the energy and other natural resources consumption of telecom operations already yielding an annualized reduction of 47 K Tons CO2e with 32 K Tons projects in the pipeline.
Tata Teleservices recognizes that the journey to a cleaner and greener environment has just started.
“As a responsible company and part of the Tata Group, TTL is working relentlessly on increasing its energy reduction initiatives both in spread and intensity as well as expanding its green energy portfolio by embracing various innovations as well as developing solutions,” said Saji Mathew.
Tata Teleservices strategies
Tata Teleservices adopts a multi focused approach in the following areas:
# Improving efficiencies in its existing sites
# Working with its IPs and Telecom OEMs to increase the number and geographic spread of Indoor BTS to Outdoor BTS conversions.
# Replacing the conventional energy sources with renewable (green) energy sources for its MSCs.
# Generation of renewable power at its BTS sites by working with renewable energy service companies (RESCOs).
# Introducing revolutionary battery technologies like Lithium-Ion and higher efficiency DGs like diesel turbine generator sets.
# Develop community specific solutions. eg. Fishermen for predicting fishing areas and thus increasing the yield.
Tata Teleservices will continue to endeavour to help itself and the community at large for developing a less carbon intensive and sustainable future.
Tata Teleservices’ Saji Mathew says solar energy is a fair alternative in India, considering the adequate sunshine received. But the use of solar power in its pure form is not the best alternative, because of constraint like availability of shadow-free south-facing space, high CAPEX for stand-alone solar system and has limited utility on cloudy or non-sunny days.
A fully solarized site to cater for non-sunny days will require 4-5 times more space, making it unviable and highly costly. Tata Teleservices alongwith their infrastructure provider deployed Solar-Hybrid system solution of 4 kw capacity solar panels in tandem with and 600 AH battery banks, which helped reduce the DG run hours from 15 to 4 hours a day. The balance 20 hours is entirely powered by this solution.
The company has 50 sites with off grid powered by solar system resulting to Annualized reduction in CO2e emission of 13.8TCO2e
Energy efficiency has become a strategic priority for mobile network operators (MNOs) and managing energy usage can both lower costs and reduce MNOs’ carbon footprint. Tata Teleservices implemented wheeling of open access renewable energy for our core locations.
“This renewable energy available for wheeling of open access power are from Wind and solar energy wherein we have a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) signed off with the vendor towards supply of grid power,” said Tata Teleservices’ Saji Mathew.
Tata Teleservices implemented wheeling for open access renewable energy at 6 Nos. of core location, resulting to Grid savings around 10363MW and annualized reduction in CO2e emission of 7876TCO2e.
Baburajan K
[email protected]
