Chief Technical Officer

HEADING: The Green Towers Revolution INTRO: Beset by technical and energy issues, the solar power system remains the only economically viable and tested solution for the telecom tower industry The telecom towers burnt about 2 billion liters of diesel and produced 5.3 million tons of Co2 in 2010. It should not come as a surprise that these diesel guzzling giants will consume 2.8 billion liters and produce 7.4 million tons of Co2 by 2015. It just goes to show that the telecom tower industry has evolved into the second largest consumer of diesel – next only to the Indian railways. The tower industry’s rapid growth resulted in tower companies adopting diesel-powered systems at telecom sites. However, the systems proved to be unsustainable in the long run. The core focus of tower companies was expansion and profits at the expense of strength and steady growth through more energy-efficient solar power systems. Therefore it was quite obvious that urgent action needed to be taken to switch over to solar power systems. One of the main culprits was outsourcing of highly technical services to vendors (OMEs & SMEs) with the lowest bid without checking their credentials to execute the job. Over the years, some tower companies lost technical expertise required to run a company efficiently. In order to resolve technical issues they depended solely on vendors’ help to reduce energy consumption. During the expansion phase, DoT and TRAI failed to enforce minimum standards for power systems at telecom sites. As a consequence, the sites ended up as a free-for-all testing ground for vendors supplying new equipment with little or no overall understanding of the power and battery system. The pressure from mobile operators to reduce monthly energy cost has resulted in tower companies taking unnecessary risks to try out anything that comes with a promise of energy reductions. DoT TEC ,TRAI & MNRE realized that using diesel to power the telecom sites is unsustainable, and came up with a...