Ascend Telecom in green power deal with Intelligent Energy

Intelligent Energy and NSR controlled Ascend Telecom Infrastructure have signed a deal to provide power for telecom towers across India.

The multi-year agreement focuses on offering cost-effective, clean energy solutions, efficient energy management and reducing the environmental impact of India’s widespread telecom towers across urban, sub-urban and rural areas.

“Intelligent Energy’s green technology and power management solution further strengthens Ascend’s efforts to ensure the delivery of this promise to our customers,” said Sushil Kumar Chaturvedi, CEO, Ascend Telecom.

Indian mobile telecom industry currently has some 425,000 telecom towers. The number of telecom towers will almost double to 800,000 by 2020.

However, nearly three-quarters of these do not have grid power for eight hours or more each day due to power cuts and rely on generators powered by diesel.

Ascend Telecom in green power deal with Intelligent Energy

India’s telecom tower generators consume around 2.6 billion litres of diesel a year – making the industry the second-largest consumer of diesel in the country. This, in turn, is eroding the profits of India’s mobile service providers.

“India represents a huge opportunity. The market is already worth as much as $2.8 billion a year. The collaboration with Ascend alone is the equivalent of providing power to all the telecom towers in greater London serving more than 10 million end-consumers or about one-sixth of the UK population,” said Henri Winand, chief executive officer of Intelligent Energy.

Intelligent Energy is integrating Power Management Solutions for power installed at Ascend Telecom towers. Ascend operates telecom towers across India with an installed power base of some 40MW.

The partnership uses Ascend Telecom’s extensive field service capability to deploy the most efficient power solutions for Telecom tower requirements. This includes installation of Intelligent Energy’s advanced power solutions including fuel cell power systems with a view to reducing both operating costs and the carbon footprint relative to the current traditional diesel generators.

Intelligent Energy aims to extend the distributed power management offer to other telecom and tower companies that face similar challenges of intermittent and unreliable electricity supply, and are looking for clean power systems.

The two companies will explore close working relationships and strategic partnerships with technology, equipment and service providers over the next few months to help optimise the distributed power management solutions.

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