Greentech Lead India: OMC Power, a renewable energy
service company, will assist Bharti Infratel for powering Bharti Infratel’s
off-grid and poor grid telecom tower sites in rural areas using renewable
energy sources.
The partnership will enable Bharti Infratel to enhance
its ongoing green initiatives called GreenTowers P7 for promoting the use of
renewable sources to power its towers.
As part of the agreement, OMC will set up Micropower
plants in off-grid and low grid locations to generate electricity primarily
using renewable energy sources and supply energy to Infratel’s tower sites.
This will help reduce the use of diesel-powered gensets currently used to power
these towers. The new initiative will benefit rural households in the local
community vicinity by supplying them electricity to power fans, lighting,
televisions, and water pumps etc.
Bharti Infratel currently has over 33,000 towers, of which nearly 9000 are in
off-grid / poor grid locations. Following successful joint trials, OMC has
already built the first Micropower Plant in Uttar Pradesh as part of this
10-year agreement.
Sairam Prasad, chief technical officer & head of O&M at Bharti
Infratel, said while progress has been made in providing telecoms in rural
areas, this has been largely achieved without grid-power availability – a key
ingredient in providing telecom uptime to this critical infrastructure.
OMC has partnered with technology companies to build its
micropower plants and is using a combination of wind, solar, diesel and battery
back-up to ensure a constant supply of power.
According to Anil Raj, co-founder and CEO of OMC Power,
its micropower Plants have been designed specifically for rural areas. The
company has moved power from Capex to Opex and can supply more electricity at a
better price than operators can by doing it themselves.
With over 1.4 billion people living without access to
electricity and 500 million off-grid mobile connections, operators are
constantly looking for new ways to provide a commercially viable service.