A new partnership will see telecom tower sites in rural India being powered by renewable energy. Passive telecom infrastructure provider Bharti Infratel has entered into the arrangement with Renewable Energy Service Company (RESCO) OMC Power to set up Micropower plants to power infrastructure in off-grid and poor grid regions.
OMC’s Micropower plants will generate electricity primarily using renewable energy sources and supply energy to Infratel’s tower sites. This will help reduce the use of diesel-powered gensets currently used to power these towers. In addition, this initiative will benefit rural households in the local community vicinity by supplying them electricity to power fans, lighting, televisions, and water pumps etc.
Around 9000 of Bharti Infratel’s 33,000 towers are in areas that have limited or no access to grid power. Joint trials conducted by the two firms were successful, and OMC has constructed the first Micropower plant in Uttar Pradesh as part of the 10-year agreement.
Sairam Prasad, Chief Technical Officer & Head of O&M at Bharti Infratel, said: "While great progress has been made in providing telecoms in rural areas, this has been largely achieved without grid-power availability – a key ingredient in providing telecom uptime to this critical infrastructure. The Resco model will help tower firms whose core competency is to enable telecom reach – and what better if it’s primarily based on green and renewable energy sources.”
Anil Raj, co-founder and CEO of OMC Power, said: “Our Micropower Plants have been designed specifically for rural areas. We have moved power from Capex to Opex and can supply more electricity at a better price than operators can by doing it themselves”.
OMC has partnered with established technology companies to build its Micropower Plants and is using a combination of wind, solar, diesel and battery back-up to ensure a constant supply of power. Using a hybrid of techniques means that at any point in time power will be drawn from the most suitable source with little or no wastage.
