ENERGYSTORAGE

Powering the Tower with Energy Storage; India

adopting Energy Storage as new a Solutions
Debi Prasad Dash, Customized Energy Solutions

Leader does and industry follows. Reliance and SAFT deal might have raised the eyebrow
of many industry followers. But the USD 40 million deals between Reliance Jio Infocomm
and Paris-based battery manufacturer SAFT opened up the Indian telecom industry for a
sustainable future. SAFT will supply specialized lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries, which will be
used at Reliance mobile tower sites for meeting power requirement.

ith ~76% of teledensity and

with ~650,000 mobile towers India is becoming a major
market for billion dollar companies. Indias
telecom sector is now the second largest
in the world, and the fastest growing. Currently the annual revenue of the industry is
around INR 1.36 trillion. To promote this
sector earlier this year government approved telecom towers Infrastructure status and already allowed 100% FDI.
It is estimated that total number of telecomtowers would reach ~1,000,000 by
FY17 primarily driven byincreasing penetration in rural areas.But some of the major
obstacles in the industry involve high operating cost and lower availability of continuous electricity in rural and semi urban areas.
Some of the pain points of the sector are
Fuel cost involves major portion of the
Operational Expenses:Around 30-34%
of telecom tower operational expenditure involves the fuel cost. Due to the

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NOV|DEC13

Energy storage
application can provide
20-25% of annual savings
in current fuel cost to
the operators. Different
technologies such as
advanced Lead acid,
lithium Ion, Zinc bromide
can be suitable for this
purpose
risky power scenario ~40% of the telecom towers face load shedding for
more than 12 hours per day. 60% of
the power requirement for the tower is
mostly fulfilled by diesel than Grid.
Use of DG and Diesel Pilferage:Cost of
power using DG(including subsidy) is
80-120% more than electricity.Diesel
pilferage losses ~20%, also increases
the overall energy costs further.
Higher dependency on Diesel and Diesel
price Increment:It is estimated that tel-

ecomtowers alone consume ~2 billion

litters of diesel per year.Five years ago,
the telecom industry overtook Indian
Railways briefly as the countrys largest consumer of diesel, mentioned by
the report by the environmental group
Greenpeace.Unregulated diesel price
is a major headache for the tower operators.The rise in diesel prices, by more
than 50% since January 2009, is something towercos cant afford to ignore.
Higher Carbon emission and Regulatory Guidelines:Towers have a significant carbon footprint. Diesel consumption from telecom towers accounts for
~5.2million tons of carbon dioxideper
year, which is 2% of total green-house
gas emissions from India. Questions
have been raised by TRAI to control
emission.TRAI is also contemplating telecom service providers to aim at Carbon
emission reduction targets for the mobile net-work at 8% by the year 20142015, 12% by the year 2016-2017 and

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ENERGYSTORAGE
INDIA

17% by the year 2018-2019.

Unpredictable generation of renewable
energy for hybrid towers:As a reform
many Tower operators started using renewable energy like Solar, Wind and bio
fuel for the hybrid tower. Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) proposed
to power at least 50% of all rural towers
and 20% of the urban towers by hybrid
power (Renewable Energy Technologies
(RET) + Grid power) by 2015 & 75% of
rural towers and 33% of urban towers by
hybrid power by 2020. But unpredictable
generation of renewable energy is not
giving enough benefits to the operator.
Considering these factors energy storage integration with the telecom tower
is a better prospective for the sustainable
future. Energy storage application can
provide 20-25% of annual savings in current fuel cost to the operators. Different
technologies such as advanced Lead acid,
lithium Ion, Zinc bromide can be suitable
for this purpose. In some case fly-wheel
storage system can also be integrated with
large capacity tower.
Why Energy storage application is a
better solution to fuel issue of telecom
tower?
Initial Capital Expenditure moderate
Operational Expense Low
Reliability High
Capacity High (As per the requirement
of the tower)
Dependency Low (Independent to
geographic location)
Fuel availability Can be integrated to
Grid and Renewable energy source both
Eco Friendliness High (Depends upon the
technology and higher than the Diesel)
In mid last year, Indus Tower Ltd announced it would be replacing diesel generators with energy storage at 20,000 of
its 110,000 towers within next 2 years. The
move came after the company stopped using diesel for power back-up in 5,000 towers, saving 3.6 million litres of the fuel a
year .India Energy Storage alliance, IESA
predicts that, after Reliance-SAFT deal, in
near future other telecom tower operators
like BSNL, GTL, Viom and Bharati Infratel
will join the reform.
To support this reform many foreign
and Indian battery manufacturers like EXIDE, ABB, GE Energy, High Power batteries
are active in the Indian market.
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