Wednesday, 5 August 2015

Renewable Energy Sources & Telecom Tower Business in India -- Part-II

Renewable Energy Sources & Telecom Tower Business in India

Mobile Market in India:

As per TRAI, The number of Wireless subscribers as on Jan 2015 was 952.34 million with monthly growth rate of 0.89%. Further this growth in Urban area was 0.51% and Rural Area was 1.41%.

The main service providers to wireless subscribers are:
Airtel (23.11%), Vodafone (18.95%), Idea (16.05%), Reliance (11.19%) and BSNL (8.42%) capturing more than 75% market share.

Market Share of Service Providers is as below:[1]



Telecom Tower companies in India
1.   Operator owned Tower companies (Bharti Infratel, Reliance Infratel)
2.   Operator owned Joint ventures (Indus, VIOM)
3.   Independent Tower companies (GTL Infra, Essar Towers, ATC-Xcel etc.)

Recent position in terms of number of Telecom towers in India is as below:

Operator Owned Tower company:

Tower company
Total no. of Tower
No. of Green Towers
Bharti Infratel
85,892

Reliance Infratel
43,379


Operator Owned Joint ventures:
Indus is a joint venture between Bharti Infratel, Vodafone and Aditya Birla Group.
VIOM is a subsidiary of Tata Teleservices Limited.

Tower company
Total no. of Tower
No. of Green Towers
Tenancy Ratio
Indus[2]
1,16,454
40,000
~ 2
VIOM[3]
42,000

2.15

Independent Tower companies:

Tower company
Total no. of Tower
No. of Green Towers
Tenancy Ratio
GTL Infra[4]
27,839

1.45
ATC India[5]
13,000
450


Types of Tower
  1.          Ground-Based Towers (GBT)
  2.         Roof Top Towers (RTT)
  3.        . Monopoles

 GBT Site can accommodate 3-4 operators whereas RTT site can accommodate 2-3 operators.

Main concern of Telecom Tower companies: Increased carbon Footprint due to DG sets and increased OPEX (Operational Expenditure)

Remedy: Reducing DG set usage and hence carbon footprints

Methods adopted by companies to Reduce Carbon Footprint:[6]
  1. Converting Indoor sites to Outdoor sites: leads to reduction in energy consumption by 25%
  2. New site Deployment: Outdoor preferred
  3. New site deployment as sharer
  4. Solar DG Hubrid Model
  5. RESCO Model: Renewable Energy Service Company installs small renewable energy based power plant near site catering to local community and sites
  6. Li-ion Battery
  7. IPMS/PPC—Integrated Power Management Solutions/Plug and Play Cabinets
  8. Variable Speed DG sets
  9. Free Cooling Units (FCUs) use ambient air to cool the shelter
  10. DC DG sets results in 40% savings in operating expenses
  11. DG capacity revalidation (high to low)
  12. Activating new energy-saving software features – such as          transceivers that switch-off automatically in periods of low traffic
  13. Smart Battery solutions for faster charging
  Power availability for Tower sites:



Electricity Board (EB) power availability of less than 12 hours covering mostly rural areas will need Hybrid Power (Renewables+Diesel). Further these Towers should be Outdoor to save energy consumption in Air Conditioning. RESCO Model may be other option where Renewable Energy Service Company may set up very small Power Plant near Telecom tower site and supply energy to cell site as well as neighbouring population.
Semi-urban and small urban towns with EB supply between 12-16 hours can go for hybrid solution. As OPEX of any tower is around 50% in terms of energy consumption. So for the long term it is in the interest of sustainability of business itself apart from environment and climate change. Tower requires nearly Rs. 20-30 lakh expenditure, and added cost to renewable may be further Rs. 5 lakh. Reduced expenditure in OPEX will compensate CAPEX in the long term. Many analysts have come out with payback period calculation that are favourable for investment in renewables for tower business. On an average BTS are powered by 4 kWp (per BTS).

As per TRAI’s directive 75% of Rural Towers and 33% of Urban Towers are to be powered by Hybrid power by 2020. Taking this into consideration very few options are left with tower companies other than using Renewables or incorporating renewables in the power supply setup.



[2] http://www.industowers.com/who_we_are.php
[3] http://www.viomnetworks.com/images/Investors/2.%20Directors%20Report%20VNL_13-14.pdf
[4] http://www.gtlinfra.com/pdf/GIL-AR2014.pdf
[6] Various sources
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