Ascot: Tailoring hybrid energy for emerging market telecoms

Ascot Industrial designed their first hybrid energy solution for cell sites as long ago as 2008. Ascot Industrial made their mistakes, learned and moved on before many of their competitors even entered the market. Their installed base is testament to their maturity – Ascot Industrial has power systems at over 34,000 cell sites, 5,964 of which are hybrid solutions, and their products are proven in 34 different countries. Naturally, TowerXchange wanted to learn from their experience…

TowerXchange: Please introduce where Ascot Industrial fits into the telecoms infrastructure ecosystem.

Unlike our competitors, Ascot does not manufacture ‘standard’ generators and hybrid solutions. Our approach is to provide tailored solutions, helping our clients to choose the right power solution for the given application. If standard solutions can satisfy 50% of market needs, Ascot wants to satisfy 80-90% of market needs. In order to achieve this, it’s critical that we get out in the field, go to sites, talk to our customers and understand, develop and improve our solution to meet our customers’ evolving needs. It’s only by visiting remote sites and looking at how they are configured that we can apply our know-how to optimize that site to benefit both the operator and ourselves!

TowerXchange: How did Ascot Industrial get into the hybrid energy for telecoms market?

From the inception of Ascot Industrial in 1986 until 2000, our core business was developing generators for military, defence, power plants and marine applications. But the defence sector has been for us like Formula 1 is to Ferrari – a cutting-edge R&D function which we’ve now applied to the telecoms sector. For example, back in 1997 we developed an application to charge the huge batteries on submarines whilst they were in harbor and the engine was off. Ten years later I was speaking with a manager from Zain, who challenged me to produce an engine with low fuel consumption to power his cell sites. At first I thought it was impossible, but from his words came the idea to apply the same technology we used to charge submarine batteries to charge cell site battery banks, even when the generator was switched off.

Having proven our application worked at a large scale to charge submarine batteries, it was relatively simple to adapt it to charge the 600-1000amp batteries at cell sites, and we quickly developed and sold our first hybrid solution in 2008, which was installed in harsh conditions in the Sudan.

Between 2008 and 2009 we installed 15 units in 15 different countries for different telecom operators, so we proved the solution in different temperature, humidity and altitude scenarios – it was a good challenge, so we invested in the project.

When we were working with the operators in the field, Ascot was fixing the problems of today and of tomorrow. Ascot is now positioned to meet the specific needs of telecoms. A cell site in the desert is like a forward communication base in a war – reliability is critical and maintenance visits must be kept to an absolute minimum. As competition becomes more aggressive in telecoms, particularly in Africa, the battle will be won by whoever can provide the best service at the lowest opex cost, so it’s critical to improve energy efficiency.

TowerXchange: What is Ascot’s installed base at cell sites worldwide, and what proportion of those sites have hybrid power?

Ascot have installed 34,000 generators worldwide. 5,964 of those generators are hybrids, installed in around the globe in Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, South Africa, Peru… our plug and play solutions are proven more than 34 countries and countless different scenarios.

In 2011 Vodafone Group signed a framework agreement with Ascot, leading to the installation of a significant number of our hybrid solutions in countries such as South Africa, Tanzania, Kenya, Egypt and Ghana. Vodafone is quality company that works with quality suppliers – our relationship with Vodafone proves that Ascot is recognised as one of best in the business.

TowerXchange: How do hybrid solutions compare to running diesel generators 24/7?

68% is the magic number of fuel savings you can achieve with the Ascot Hybrid.

Telcos were only using diesel generators off grid because there were no other financially viable solutions until recently.

When a consumer goes out to buy a hybrid car, the hybrid vehicles he considers are not in competition with normal cars – they are serving different needs, and there is no comparison on fuel consumption.

Telecoms are like the automotive industry – in the future no-one will use diesel (or petrol) engines – hybrid power is the future. Why don’t people use hybrid now? Price, performance and availability – and Ascot are at the forefront of improving all three.

Telecoms operators want hybrid power already, but like consumers changing their normal car for a battery car, they want to know how it will affect their operations – they want to be sure. When telecoms operators are sure hybrid power works, it’s only a matter of time before all off grid and unreliable grid cell sites are upgraded to hybrids.

Essentially hybrid solutions are big battery chargers – their role is to produce, store and reuse energy. As the price comes down and the performance and reliability is proven, the business case for hybrid energy becomes more compelling at more cell sites.

There will be a tipping point where demand for hybrid rises very quickly. At the moment innovators are still finding competitive advantages, which they don’t want to share, but when innovations are collated, everyone will want it and it will stimulate that big jump in demand. Investors aren’t afraid of those consolidated technologies.

TowerXchange: How do the power requirements differ between single and multi-tenant cell sites?

Towercos often have to invest in power solutions before they know how many tenants will be on the tower, and before they know their total power requirements.

So energy systems for shared sites need to be modular, with a low initial capex investment for single tenant sites, and a small increase in investment for each additional tenant. Towercos don’t want to deploy the capex to support multiple tenants right away, they need expansion modules with a few small extra parts for additional tenants. Ascot’s tested and proven power solution for towercos, our Modular DC-HPU for one to three BTS of up to 2 KW, has an engine capable of supplying power to three banks of batteries, so the main change to accommodate multiple tenants is to add extra battery stacks. We also enable metering to bill each tenant for their own energy consumption.

Hybrid energy is doubly effective when used at shared sites because they can share not just structural load capacity but also share power. For example, it’s like three adjacent villas sharing water, each with a 1000L water tank. If villa needs 2000L one day and the neighbors are out that day, they can take water from the empty villa.

TowerXchange: What is your view of the relative merits of solar versus wind energy?

Solar is very efficient but the limitations are that you need a lot of space, and you need to select sites with the right weather conditions. Solar systems are not sufficient to power the site and charge the batteries in the long term –they need DC generators as backup power in case there is no sun.

The case to install solar and/or wind power is justified by the difficulty to reach the location and the criticality of that coverage. So sites at the top of a mountain reachable only by helicopter and providing coverage to a remote mine that generates excellent ARPU might justify installing solar and wind to minimise refueling.

We are continuously improving our business and we try to identify the clients’ need so that they can make the choice of hybrid solution based on their own parameters.

The first parameter to understand is the “grid availability” so Ascot has developed three products that fits these scenario; our DC HPU Hybrid Power Unit, our HMINIsize (a small DC HPU) and the HPOWER Box (based on batteries only).

We have defined the following scale of value and associated products:

Our latest innovation is “Hybrid Cargo,” a portable, rapid deployment hybrid telecom power solution. This is a new product designed for UN, military, disaster relief and mass event scenarios where the grid is down and where communications need to be established quickly. Hybrid Cargo is a self-contained system which takes just three hours to reconnect power to the network, and has autonomy of up to 200 days.

TowerXchange: Finally, please sum up how you differentiate Ascot Industrial from your competitors.

What telcos understand and want more than anything else is reliability – too many products in this market are not reliable or not proven worldwide. Ascot are miles ahead of other hybrid energy solution providers – we started ‘learning by mistakes’ in 2008, long before our competitors, and our products are proven worldwide.

Out competitors are focused on the production of standard products. If a telecom operator asks for 30 KVA generators, they sell them 30 KVA generators. If a telecom operator asks Ascot for a 30 KVA generator, we ask why? Our approach is not to sell standard products but to provide tailored solutions – we ensure the right power source is chosen for each application. Ascot Industrial are a very flexible company, ‘tailor made’ is part of our attitude and culture. Which means new designs that might take our competitors years only take us a matter of months. We have the tools to develop power applications to meet the needs of our customers, we have proven experience and flexibility to get it done with no fuss.

European companies that think they can meet the needs of emerging market telecoms whilst sitting in their home office need to think again. As an industry, we need to go to our clients’ cell sites to understand their requirements, which are so different from Europe. We have a social responsibility to develop renewable energy technologies and share them with the world. We are lucky to have be born into countries where you can count on grid power to provide your home and communication needs, and we need to understand and help meet the needs of clients in other markets where reliable, extensive grid power is not something they can take for granted.