Amara Raja: Energy storage solutions proven in the world’s most challenging tower markets

Selecting the right batteries is critical to minimising energy opex in emerging markets, particularly in the context of limited grid power availability, operating temperature variations and diesel logistics challenges. Amara Raja and Johnson Controls have come together to build some of the largest and most modern battery manufacturing facilities in the world, from where they ship hundreds of thousands of lead-acid batteries for use at MNO and towerco’s cell sites. TowerXchange spoke to CMO Srinivasa Rao Ganga.

TowerXchange: Please introduce your company and your solutions for telecoms.

Amara Raja Batteries is a joint venture company with Johnson Controls Inc., USA with manufacturing facilities located in the Southern part of India. We are a publicly held company manufacturing Industrial and Automotive Batteries for more than two decades now. We have one of the world’s largest manufacturing facilities for 2V AGM VRLA batteries and the world’s largest integrated plant for manufacturing 12V AGM VRLA Monoblocks backed by sound financials and the most modern facilities.

We are the preferred energy storage battery in the telecom and UPS segments in India with a dominant market share. In the automotive space we are the preferred supplier to all major auto OEMs including Ford Motors, Hyundai, Suzuki, Mercedes Benz et cetera.

As most of us know, India is the second largest and possibly the most competitive global telecom market with more than 400,000 Towers. Our solutions today work in more than half of those installations. It is the market which has seen the transition of passive infrastructure, changing hands from MNO to towercos on a mass scale like we are seeing in emerging markets now. This has given us opportunities as well as an edge in designing and offering solutions matching changing needs.

Tower companies typically face stringent challenges of grid power availability, operating temperature variations and diesel logistics demanding different solutions for energy storage for different sites.

Our telecom solutions are mostly built around 2V offerings suitable for power deficient emerging markets. They offer the most reliable solution and at competitive total cost of ownership (TCO). Our offerings today meet the application demands of outdoor operation, deep cycling, quick recharge, partial state of charge (PSOC) operations and float applications with optimal life in these conditions.

TowerXchange: The first question our readers always ask is “how proven is the solution in the field?” I understand Amara Raja’s batteries are widely used at cell sites in Asia and Africa – can you tell us about your worldwide footprint and give us a sense of the size of the telecoms component of your business.

Yes as I have mentioned above our solutions are working today in Asia and Africa at more than 200,000 locations and have been used for more than two decades, which speaks of the proven track record of our offerings.

With tower companies focusing more and more on energy costs and efficiency, battery selection based on opex considerations and TCO has created a distinct preference for our solutions over these years.

One of the prestigious projects driven by world’s largest tower company involved conversion of many thousand sites to green sites (without DGs), for which our quick recharge variant played a vital role in achieving the towerco’s objectives. The project received a GSMA Green Mobile Award in 2013 and features the installation of more than 20,000 of our Quick Recharge Batteries (48V battery banks).

Similarly we have supplied close to 10,000 of our High Life-Deep Cycle Batteries (48V battery banks) for use in the network of an MNO in 17 countries across Africa and the oldest installation today has been working for more than three years in the environment and power conditions prevalent in Africa. We have worked on many such projects with various MNOs and tower companies in India.

Frost & Sullivan selected our batteries as the most preferred battery in telecom sector in India in 2013 and today leading towercos and MNOs operating in these markets prefer us as a single source and strategic partner for their battery requirements

Telecom sector revenues today contribute approximately 50% of our annual Industrial battery revenues.

TowerXchange: What does Amara Raja’s joint venture with Johnson Controls mean for your manufacturing and R&D capabilities?

Johnson Controls Inc. (JCI) became an equal joint venture partner with us in 1998. As part of this relationship we work collaboratively on number of product and process design projects on an ongoing basis so that there is a continuous exchange of knowledge and information between the two companies. This gives us the edge in to keep at the forefront of all latest developments in design and manufacturing of Lead Acid storage technologies which we deploy in our Energy Storage solutions.

JCI also is globally recognised for their operational efficiency and best business practices across their locations and we also follow the same practices thus delivering more value for our customers.

TowerXchange: Why are CDC batteries one of the first investments towercos make after acquiring towers from MNOs?

In our opinion, whether it is a MNO or a towerco, the management of energy costs and energy efficiency are critical success factors. The need for energy efficiency drives the tower companies to migrate to outdoor equipment including batteries. This coupled with the poor grid power situation in emerging markets led to batteries becoming a primary source of Energy. If you observe over past few years this resulted in battery deliverables being redefined like high temperature operations, higher cyclic life, deep cycling capability, PSOC working and high and faster recharge efficiency.

Today among top sustainability issues for towercos are GHG emissions, energy cost and renewable energy deployment. Typically for tower companies in most of the emerging markets energy costs are almost 50% of the total site opex, largely driven by diesel costs. This makes it necessary for them to quickly adopt CDC batteries as the most critical building block in achieving these objectives.

This reduction of energy cost is more relevant for a towerco because in their efforts at targeting multiple tenancies from various MNOs means this can be a game changer.

TowerXchange: How can owners of towers in remote areas achieve a balance between the best practices that maximise battery life cycles, and the realities of the harsh charge, discharge / partial state of charge requirements of distributed energy storage?

The most critical aspect to answer above question is the correct sizing of battery and choosing the correct variant based on the objective of the energy management solution. One solution or rating cannot be used as run of the mill solution for all sites within the same region and hence to that extent knowledge about the site conditions is very important.

While gathering knowledge about all the sites in consideration and designing customised solutions for each site is not physically possible, tower companies can certainly categorise them into groups and deploy battery based solutions.

We have seen that in a diverse and large market like India, an effective programme on preventive maintenance has significantly helped achieve optimal cyclic life from batteries even in harsh conditions.  We ourselves were involved with a large tower company in this programme and brought our battery expertise at close to half of the towers owned by them.

We believe that the key here is in selection of the right make and manufacturer of battery beyond selecting the right variant and correct sizing. We from our side can certainly bring that expertise for a towerco, having worked in similar conditions as Africa and successful deployment of various solutions.

TowerXchange: Tell us about your distribution and after sales service network in Africa, LatAm and Southern and Southeast Asia.

We look at business from two different models in terms of our reach, distribution and after sales service to serve the global markets. While some of our business with UPS and Solar or Home UPS requiring 12V Monoblocks necessitates stock availability in each of the target markets, we feel that replicating the same for telecom requirements may not be correct.

Currently in the markets where we operate in the telecom business, be it closer home in Sri Lanka or Myanmar, or markets in Africa we maintain the direct contact with customers and make supplies directly shipping out from India.

As far as after sales service is concerned, we have a regional network of our representatives who can be the first point of contact in case of a customer complaint. However our experience from these markets over last few years has seen minimal issues owing to superior design of our products and tighter quality control in manufacturing. We have also devised and implemented an innovative solution by working closely with our customers for providing after sales service which is quicker, economical and more efficient.

TowerXchange: Finally, please sum up how you would differentiate Amara Raja’s energy storage solutions from competitors?

I would like to sum it up by saying that what we have on offer for the tower companies in Africa and all emerging countries are our proven solutions from the world’s largest and most challenging tower market. Indian telecom represents all possible scenarios of temperature zones, power availability, diesel logistics challenges and remoteness of sites that you can possibly find all across the world. We have our proven installations at half of the locations in India and our solutions have been deployed for over two decades now.

We can say that we have possibly the highest experience among all energy storage solution providers in working with tower companies because of being in India and hence can understand their challenges better than anyone to offer suitable solutions.