With the industry waking up to the need for renewable energy solutions, Luminous Teleinfra System is offering green solutions for telecom base stations and promises to help operators reduce pollution, as well as operating expenses. “Luminous’ latest technology, Energy Management and Backup Unit (EMBU), is a combination of solar, wind, battery and diesel for energy usage, storage and management for base transceiver station (BTS) and base station controller (BSC) sites,” tells Paresh Pradhan, director and president, Luminous Teleinfra System, to Srabani Sen of Electronics Bazaar, while explaining why the solution is innovative and how it can benefit the industry.
Tuesday, April 07, 2009: Q: Can you call EMBU an innovative solution?
Luminous Teleinfra System is committed to delivering innovative and integrated infrastructure solutions that reduce dependency on and consumption of fossil fuels. These solutions will prove to be a significant initiative in addressing energy-related operating expenditure, saving challenges of telecom operators and infrastructure companies.
In the overall scenario, where there is no defined standard power availability, telcos need to provide for contingencies and backup. Some solutions, which have been developed to address these challenges are actually not environmentally fit due to high carbon emission and also result in higher operational expenditure (opex). But we will provide power backup using battery and inverter while adhering to environmental parameters. No doubt, it is an innovative solution.
“Our leadership position in energy conversion, storage and control technologies will definitely help the brand to replicate this success story in other ventures. We will keep on introducing innovative technologies that will certainly help the industry to improve efficiency, reduce cost and carbon footprint”
Q: EMBU is a combination of solar, wind, battery and diesel. Since diesel prices are going up by the day, how economical is it?
About Rs 35 million is spent annually on electricity and diesel in a base station. We offer solutions that reduce the operating costs of telecom operators in a big way. A majority of these sites are located in grid-deficit areas needing a diesel generator, sometimes for upto 20 hours daily. A typical 15 kilo volt ampere (KVA) diesel set consumes over 2.5 litres of diesel every hour.
Q: How environmental-friendly is it?
It is absolutely green except for the diesel. The solution is in solid state and the battery is sealed and lead-free. Hence, it is non-polluting. It is truly a green technology!
Q: Tell us about its benefits.
This solution will prove to be a significant initiative in addressing energy related opexsaving challenges of telecom operators and infrastructure companies. EMBU provides efficient energy management for single or multi-operator BTS sites with or without air-conditioners. It provides line conditioning, power backup, using battery and inverter and manages environmental parameters of the site in an intelligent and self-learning manner to optimise the energy storage and usage, thereby minimising the use of diesel generators (DG). So we can say that the major benefits are the fact that it is green technology; reduces operating expenditure, and dependency on diesel and diesel logistics faced by the operators; OPEX is reduced by 40 per cent, hence, the cost is paid back in two years.
Q: Do you expect to replicate such innovative technologies in other ventures?
Our leadership position in energy conversion, storage and control technologies will definitely help the brand to replicate this success story in other ventures. We will keep on introducing innovative technologies that will certainly help the industry to improve efficiency, reduce cost and carbon footprint. At the moment, we are targeting the telecom industry. But this solution can be provided anywhere DG is used—whether it is an office, residence or industry—it can be adopted to any scenario.
Q: Would the solution provide reliability of network?
Growth in emerging markets is one of the ultimate challenges for telecom players as more and more networks are being rolled out. It is only natural that all telcos are facing challenges like reliability of network, cost of operation and challenges posed by logistics. We will provide the needed power backup using battery and inverter.
Q: Are you coming up with new manufacturing facilities?
In the first phase, we are setting up manufacturing facilities in Himachal Pradesh for telecom and deep cycle batteries with a manufacturing capacity of approximately 1 billion AH. The company is also setting up a manufacturing facility for power electronics products such as EMBU with an annual capacity to manufacture 50,000 units. In the next phase, we plan to set up a plant to manufacture up to 20,000 shelters per annum.
Q: When will you start production?
We will start operation in July this year and largescale production will start in August.
Q: What would the demand be for this solution in the future?
It is estimated that 300,000 new BTS sites are expected to roll out in three years in India, where nearly 200,000 already exist. These sites are backed up by 15KVA to 25KVA or 40KVA DG sets. Majority of these sites are located in grid-deficit areas needing a DG set to run continuously for 4-20 hours! Even a typical 15KVA DG set consumes over 2.5 litres of diesel every hour. We propose to provide power backup using battery and inverter and since it will save energy and is pollution-free, there will definitely be a good demand.
Q: What are your future plans?
We clearly aim to be a brand of choice and among the top five passive telecom infrastructure solution providers globally by 2015, the company currently remains focused on India and other grid-deficit countries. We will keep coming up with new concepts, which will provide a strong and successful backup to the telecom industry.
Q: Do you have plans for global solutions as well?
We have already started talks with a number of operators overseas and are pleased to get good responses from countries like Africa, southeast Asia and the Middle East.
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