How to unlock energy opex efficiencies - index of RMS and ILM solutions (Updated February 2015)

Over the last two years TowerXchange have built a comprehensive library of profiles of intelligence platforms purpose-built for the tower industry. These different platforms share a common three-phase objective:

1. Collect and integrate remote monitoring and performance data from cell sites and supply chains

2. Analyse data to identify opportunities to improve efficiency

3. Integrate that intelligence into maintenance job ticketing workflows, creating a feedback loop with field maintenance teams, enabling a reduction in MTBF and ultimately a progression from reactive to preventative maintenance

Please click the links below to view profiles (updated February 2015):

...And making the case for integrated intelligent monitoring, hybrid energy market leaders Flexenclosure ask "Do you trust your data?"

Editorial, by Kieron Osmotherly, CEO, TowerXchange (May 2014)

I’m writing this editorial on a delayed flight back from speaking at the excellent GSMA Green Power for Mobile (GPM) Working Group in Lagos. My plane was delayed because of a failure of workflow - the plane had been sitting on the runway for seven hours, but nobody refueled it until we were due to board. Problems with airline workflows have inspired me to write about tower industry workflows, which can suffer similar hiccups from time to time!

At the GPM Working Group we heard that full green power solutions are in use at less than 3% of West African cell sites. A key challenge for the propagation of green power was identified as a lack of skills and processes in the field to optimise and maintain performance of complex green power systems post-installation. On paper and in test environments, green power might promise spectacular reductions in energy opex, but too often those results are not delivered in the field. Why?

One problem, it seems, is that incentives are often misaligned within the supply chain. It’s a workflow problem.

Carriers want 99.7% uptime from towercos. Towercos back-to-back those Service Level Agreements (SLAs) to managed services contractors. These managed service providers might subcontract to local field maintenance firms and refueling agencies. The refueling agencies are paid per litre of diesel pumped and for the diesel they burn in delivery.

Within this supply chain, the KPI almost everyone is most worried about is uptime. The towerco and it’s subcontractors they want to maintain client satisfaction and avoid SLA penalties, while back in the c-suite at the carrier they want to protect QoS, Customer Experience and safeguard revenues. It sounds like everyone’s pulling in the same direction, right? Well, it turns out that’s not the case.

First, let’s be honest; it’s not in the interests of a refueling agency, paid by the litre of diesel dispensed, to help reduce diesel consumption.

Secondly, focusing purely on uptime can be dangerous. Here’s an illustrative example. A field technician, let’s call him Bob, receives an emergency callout to a remote cell site that has gone down. Bob has an over-riding priority - uptime, so he throws his quick fix kit in the back of his 4x4 and starts driving. But when he departs for the site, Bob has little idea what might be causing the outage. When Bob reaches the site after a long drive over a lousy ‘road’, the site is still down but the DG looks fine and Bob’s usual ‘quick fixes’ haven’t restored service. Bob notices that another piece of new equipment has been added to the site. This is common as there are multiple tenants on this tower. Maybe Bob has been trained on this new equipment and forgotten it, maybe he hasn’t been trained at all. But here and now, to this field technician, this new piece of equipment is a suspect. Bob decides to just bypass the new equipment. Great - site back up! And just in time to avoid the SLA penalty - everyone’s happy! ...Except Bob just bypassed an expensive new energy storage innovation, which only needed a simple filter change. The site is back up, but now it’s burning diesel at a hugely increased rate, burning the green power solution provider’s value proposition with it.

Before we move on to one potential solution, we need to make the problem more complicated. There’s another huge distortion to the supply chain in Africa, and anywhere else where a significant proportion of cell sites are dependent on diesel: theft. Overlay a virulent diesel mafia on top of the supply chain for a cell site (let’s be honest, sometimes the diesel mafia is very much part of the supply chain), and you have parties with a strong incentive for green power to not work. Parties with a strong incentive for supply chains to remain broken and for more and more diesel to be poured into cell sites to maintain uptime. Parties that are literally siphoning off 30% or more of that diesel.

So, we’ve got a lack of visibility into the causes of outages, a front line skills shortage, misalignment of incentives, compounded by pilferage, and the result is that a large proportion of remote cell sites continue to run noisy, polluting and expensive diesel generators 24/7.

At TowerXchange, we’re hoping to share some case studies and interviews that might offer solutions to this dilemma. It’s clear that we need more visibility and accountability within our supply chains and workflows. We have all this data coming from remote monitoring systems on our cell sites, but it’s just data, it’s not intelligence.

Intelligence platforms may offer a solution

TowerXchange has now profiled 25 different RMS, ILM, intelligent site management and access control systems. In each of those profiles, we ask the developers of these solutions for success stories from the field - some report tremendous efficiency improvements.

We encourage readers to learn from the stories of each of the 25 solutions providers listed here. When you’re sending out an RFP for an RMS, ILM, ISM or access control system, please ensure you include all relevant companies from this list.

Bob receives an emergency callout to a remote cell site that has gone down, except this time the job ticket tells him that there’s a filter that needs changing on that new energy storage device. The device needs so little maintenance that Bob had forgotten it was there! Bob grabs a replacement filter from the warehouse, grabs his mechatronic site access key, and drives out to the site. A bumpy drive later, Bob types into his key a unique, time-limited code given to him by SMS, and accesses the site. Five minutes later, Bob takes a picture of the replaced filter, uploads it to the NOC via an app on his smart phone, and receives approval that he has completed of the task. Before he leaves the site, he gets two further tasks from the NOC, including taking another photo to confirm the addition of a second tenant’s equipment to the site.

The site is back up, the SLA penalty has still been avoided, the backup generator remains silent, and the green power vendor is making serene progress toward a successful trial and a big order that will ease the pressure of those debts built up by all that expensive R&D!

This time everyone really is happy. Well, everyone except the diesel mafia. Their ‘guy on the inside’ got fired last month because something called a ‘time attendance monitoring system’ identified that whenever he got the call to fill the diesel tank, 30L of fuel went missing or it was cut with water.

Is this solution a mirage or a reality? Can these intelligence platforms really bring the transparency and alignment within the supply chain that will unlock those hypothetical energy opex savings? It’s early days, but we have some success stories of broken supply chains and workflows that have been fixed by the intelligence these platforms provide. If you have a case study you can share with our readers, please give me a call or drop me an email!

Best of luck!

Kieron Osmotherly, Founder and CEO, TowerXchange

M. +44 7771 148001

E. kosmotherly@towerxchange.com