When a sweeping power failure blacked out 700 million people in India last July, the cell sites that connect nearly one billion mobile phone users in the country were largely unaffected.

The vast majority of Indian cell-phone base stations, which each include a tower and radio equipment attached to it, had backup diesel power because the electricity goes out frequently, and many run on diesel entirely if there is no power grid in the area at all. Now dirty diesel generators in India are being challenged by clean, renewable energy, and the movement has implications for other developing nations that also have incomplete or unreliable electric networks. Even in developed nations with reliable electricity, changes in the structure of mobile networks could open the door for alternative energy.

In India, which has about 400,000 base stations, the government has mandated that 50 percent of rural sites be powered by renewables by 2015. The decision comes as the Indian government, which heavily subsidizes diesel, looks to lessen the country’s reliance on foreign oil and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. By 2020 75 percent of rural and 33 percent of urban stations will need to run on alternative energy.

The move by the world’s second-largest mobile market after China will likely drive down the price of renewable-powered base stations for other regions with low electrification rates, such as sub-Saharan Africa, according to Mrinmoy Chattaraj, a campaigner with Greenpeace India’s Climate and Energy Unit.

“It’s been a slow rate of adoption,” Eric Woods, research director with Pike Research, says of the telecom industry’s uptake of renewables to date. “But India’s deployment will have an impact across the developing world. It’s moving the market away from the default position of using diesel.”

There are about five million cell phone towers worldwide, 640,000 of which aren’t connected to an electrical grid and largely run on diesel power. One study estimated that 75,000 new off-grid towers would be established in 2012 alone.

The Indian telecom industry consumed an estimated 3.2 billion liters of diesel in 2011, and the amount could rise to six billion liters by 2020, according to Greenpeace India. Enforcement of new regulation would save more than 540 million liters of diesel annually and cut about nine million tons of carbon emissions by 2015.

Diesel prices have nearly tripled in the past twelve years in India, to about 80 cents per liter in July 2012. The price is expected to increase further with diesel deregulation, according to Chattaraj, as solar technologies become cheaper. Today, solar installations with battery backups are more expensive to install upfront, but the yearly operational expenditure is far lower, recouping the investment in about two to four years. The current annual cost to run a diesel generator for a base station is about $14,510 in India, compared with $8,215 for solar with battery backup. By 2020 the annual cost of using diesel is expected to be more than $20,000 whereas the cost of solar and batteries will likely fall to less than $5,500.

Renewable options also become much more viable as the amount of energy needed to power base stations is reduced. The average cellular base station, which comprises the tower and the radio equipment attached to it, can use anywhere from about one to five kilowatts (kW), depending on whether the radio equipment is housed in an air-conditioned building, how old the tower is and how many transceivers are in the base station. Most of the energy is used by the radio to transmit and receive cell-phone signals. On the low end, a tower that runs all the time uses about the same energy annually as an average U.S. household. Many of the off-grid stations, however, use closer to five kW, according to Pike Research, a market research firm that covers global clean-tech markets.

6 Comments

1. 1. dwbd 08:35 PM 1/15/13

   This is an application where Solar makes good sense, a type of isolated off-grid application. If only the Greenie Religious types would focus on sensible applications like these, instead of nutty scams like Grid Solar power in Germany.

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2. 2. Teck Kee 10:09 PM 1/15/13

   This is one of the few well written articles I have come across lately. Most Telcos thinks Solar hybrid solutions are only suitable for off-grid sites. They fail to realize that the upfront savings for a conventional power system + transformer + transmission infra in a new site can added up to about $20K, payback is less than 2 years. A well design Solar hybrid system costing about $32K is able replace grid connect and off-grid systems. This approach will free up much need grid power for the manufacturing sector and reduce operating expenses of >90%. We provide customized turn key 3rd generation solar hybrid solutions with 5 years warranty including the battery.

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3. 3. Jürgen Hubert in reply to dwbd 06:23 AM 1/16/13

   Hardly a scam - Germany's subsidies provided a ready market for solar cells which helped fuel their massive drop in prices.

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4. 4. dwbd in reply to Jürgen Hubert 02:37 PM 1/16/13

   Yep, a scam of the worst sort. Paying outrageous prices for power, when there are hundreds of far more cost effective options. Does the phrase carbon abatement cost mean anything to you? Same expenditure, >10X more emissions reductions by other methods.
   
   So they helped bring down the cost of Solar, if they spent the money on batteries a whole lot more would have been accomplished, by making EVs practical, only holdup is battery volumes. And Nuclear Energy is far more cost effective than Solar, even at current ultra-low volumes. If they spent that money on Nuclear instead then a massive drop in Nuclear prices would have occurred, lower than coal.
   
   All they have accomplished is Solar PV is now just ridiculously expensive and not scalable and not feasible as a replacement for fossil fuels - instead of just being outrageously expensive. And latest installed Solar price in USA is $5.30/watt peak, that's about $41k per kwavg in USA and $66k/watt avg in Germany. Ridiculous, and scarcely a "massive" drop in prices, with scaled up Nuclear certainly being < $3k/watt avg - EVERYWHERE!
   

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5. 5. greenhome123 05:32 PM 1/17/13

   According to the futurist Raymond Kurzweil, Solar will power the world in less than 15 years. Solar power is about 1% of the world power right now, but it is experiencing exponential growth, similar to computer processing speed. Solar panels are coming down dramatically in cost per watt. And as a result of that, the total amount of solar energy is growing, not linearly, but exponentially. It’s doubling every 2 years and has been for 20 years. And again, it’s a very smooth curve.
   http://aonetwork.com/AOStory/Solar-Power-Case-Study-Exponential-Growth

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6. 6. kbelectronics 05:34 AM 1/30/13

   we have installed more than 600 solar systems for cellular towers, factory rooftops and solar pumps without batteries and found that the real area of concern is the maintenance of these systems over a long period. So our next step was to create a separate entity which will regularly check up on these system to ensure that the efficiency of these systems is has not tapered off and that no unit has failed due to environmental damage or negligence.
   Siddharth
   KB Electronics
   www.kbelectronics.co.in
   kbelectronics@gmail.com
   +91 9920791222

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