Bharti Airtel Limited has regiserted significant milestones in its endeavor to build a ‘green’ environment friendly mobile network aimed at reducing its carbon footprint in Africa.
Airtel is currently established in Rwanda where they are also constructing their Home. A lot of technical activities are ongoing. However, they haven’t announced when they will officially launch their services.
The Company says in the last one year, it has reduced telecom sites running solely on diesel by more than 50% by overcoming the challenge of lack of grid connectivity through use of innovative models such as Hybrid Battery Bank.
By 2013, the Company aims at completely eradicating dependence on diesel to power its network. This means no telecom site of the company will rely solely on diesel power 24 hours a day.
Hybrid Battery Banks collect the excess energy produced by the diesel powered generator in a battery that powers the site once the generator in switched off reducing the use of diesel by up to 14 hours a day.
Close to 60% of Bharti Airtel’s telecom sites in Africa are now powered using the Hybrid model resulting in major reduction in emissions and also operating costs for the company.
The telecom giant is targeting over 70% of all its sites to be powered by the Hybrid model by end of 2013. Airtel is also working on the use of solar and wind power to power its telecom sites.
Eben Albertyn, Chief Technical Officer, Bharti Airtel, saiys,“Our first priority is to reduce the number of sites that are completely reliant on diesel generators by connecting the sites to electricity grid in areas where this option is feasible.
Where it is not, alternative forms of power supply are explored including Hybrid Battery Banks and solar/wind power. This is our part in conserving the environment”.
Bharti Airtel said that it has already made significant strides in using solar panels to power sites in select markets. Over the last two months, 105 solar sites have already been set up in Niger reducing the use of diesel generators from 24 hours a day to a meager 3 to 4 hours.
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