Total are uniquely positioned to provide all four of the critical components of the ESCO proposition. They have obvious capacity and accountability for diesel logistics from a footprint of 15,000 refueling sites worldwide. And they have a global field workforce and a robust balance sheet. In addition, through SunPower, one of the world’s top three leaders in the solar industry, they have renewable energy solutions proven at off-grid telecom sites.
TowerXchange: While Total needs no introduction, please could you introduce Total’s Energy Solutions department and your relationship with SunPower – where do you fit in the telecoms infrastructure ecosystem?
Ingrid Jaumain, Head of Energy Solutions, Total Marketing & Services:
Total is not only one of the world’s leading oil and gas companies – we provide many more amazing capabilities across more than 150 countries.
In terms of where Total fits in the telecoms infrastructure ecosystem, of course we play a critical role in fuel supply, supplying tens of thousands of cell sites with diesel either directly or distributed from our 15,000 gas stations. Our assets also include SunPower, a leading solar company which has installed over 3,000 pure solar and solar hybrid telecom sites. This gives Total a unique synthesis; we can leverage a huge client portfolio and operational footprint in challenging countries across Africa, the Middle East, Asia-Pacific, the Americas and the Caribbean – countries where MNOs and towercos have to tackle the challenge of generating energy far beyond the reach of the electricity grid.
SunPower was one of only the actors worldwide able to provide robust solar power solutions; when they started in the 1980’s it was a small market. SunPower develops the key components of their solution in-house, including data loggers and remote monitoring, and provides a full O&M service for several clients. Total’s Marketing & Services, one of the three branches of the Total Group, has a view to providing a complete set of multi-energy services to a customer base with diverse energy needs, from MW power plants, commercial buildings and homes to remote, distributed sites.
Total has thousands of people in the field, which is critical to field operations in telecom. Given our responsibility both for fuel supply and service, customers can trust that our fuel deliveries are up to international standards both in terms of services and product quality. As an upstream and downstream major in African countries, for example, we can’t afford not to provide high quality service – we have to be reliable to keep the trust of our customers and stakeholders. Our customers are able to leverage Total’s commitment to high standards, and our commitment to better energy – our value proposition is all about reducing energy risk and optimising fuel operations, batteries and renewables from grid connected to unreliable and off grid environments.
The unique, global footprint of Total and SunPower, spanning deep knowledge of diesel and renewables, enables us to build a sustainable relationship with our clients, helping them to save money by showing them how to hybridise a site, and showing them which sites to hybridise.
Total has extensive experience of operating such multi-product projects for the mining industry, which faces similar challenges of providing capitally intensive equipment with different sources of energy in remote areas. We are able to leverage multiple energy sources, from diesel and lubricants to solar.
The unique, global footprint of Total and SunPower, spanning deep knowledge of diesel and renewables, enables us to build a sustainable relationship with our clients, helping them to save money by showing them how to hybridise a site, and showing them which sites to hybridise
TowerXchange: How proven are your solutions in the field?
Ingrid Jaumain, Head of Energy Solutions, Total Marketing & Services:
Total and SunPower are already managing over 3,000 cell sites, including thousands of sites for a really big MNO in Africa for whom we also do O&M and fuel supply. For some clients and some sites we supply just diesel, sometimes it’s just solar.
My role is a new position within a new entity created to provide optimised energy solutions for our B2B customers. The Telecom sector is a priority for us and we aim at providing the industry with a consolidated, worldwide energy operator offer, ultimately delivered through an opex / ESCO business model based on the aforementioned value proposition of optimising the full energy path. In the most integrated models, the idea is to offer ten to fifteen year operating contracts with zero capex across Africa, the Middle East, Americas and APAC. We have all the bricks we need to put this all together.
TowerXchange: How can MNOs and towercos be certain that the optimal power source is running at any given time? How can you ensure that field technicians don’t manually over-ride power source selection without good reason?
Ingrid Jaumain, Head of Energy Solutions, Total Marketing & Services:
I have two answers to this question, the first of which is from a site design perspective. It is critical to carefully design the energy system to achieve the correct balance of solar, energy storage and diesel on hybrid sites. Well designed hybrid sites rarely encounter problems with the selection of the optimal power source.
The second part of the solution is monitoring. Our data logger has been developed in-house, based on our extensive experience in managing the DG, solar and battery banks remotely. Data is pushed to our platform managed in France, which co-ordinates alerts and field operations.
The combination of robust remote monitoring with local knowledge and the right local partners are key – you’ve got to know how they will react in the field. That’s why we also have dedicated, robust and cost-effective energy GPRS monitoring, developed based on the O&M knowledge and experience in the group. Given the challenging conditions in field operations, our principle is to keep systems and processes simple and easy to operate in the field.
TowerXchange: What is the addressable market for 100% solar and solar hybrid cell sites in terms of load and grid conditions? At what load does diesel simply make more sense?
Ingrid Jaumain, Head of Energy Solutions, Total Marketing & Services:
It’s difficult to give one simple answer, because it always depends on the quality of power available, drive time to the site and a number of different variables. However, we’ve seen some vendors install solar on big sites where the contribution will be very low. Based on the real data we’ve gathered from over 3,000 solar and hybrid cell sites, we seldom see return on capital invested at sites with greater than a 3kW load, particularly on sites that are a short distance from a fuel depot.
Small, remote cell sites are sometimes very difficult to supply with diesel at reasonable logistical costs. There is a business case for 100% solar (always with batteries) at small sites up to 1kW.
Most cell sites average loads of 1-3kW where hybrid solutions, with a balance of anywhere between 20-80% solar versus diesel, often deliver RoI. What gives us our credibility is Total’s commitment to lower energy opex no matter what energy source is used.
Most cell sites average loads of 1-3kW where hybrid solutions, with a balance of anywhere between 20-80% solar versus diesel, often deliver RoI
TowerXchange: What is the difference between the cheapest solar panels on the market and “carrier grade” solutions in terms of energy density and longevity?
Ingrid Jaumain, Head of Energy Solutions, Total Marketing & Services:
Quality of product is key. The reputation of solar has been harmed by certain actors who damaged the market with unreliable solar panels and who didn’t optimise site design – they put poor quality solar products on large sites where renewables don’t make economic sense.
Total chose SunPower because of the quality of the technology. SunPower panels can provide 38% more energy from the equivalent surface areas compared to traditional solar modules. Given the space contraints on MNO and, particularly, towerco sites, this can be critical.
Total qualifies our products and equipment by simply listening to our clients’ needs, designing a relevant solution, and bringing that to market through local channels, giving the customer someone to talk to in case of problems in the field. We already tackle complex and remote sites supply as we are for instance present in this market in mining, and have the intention to increase our market footprint in the telecom segment.
Governments are rightly prioritising QoS, so the stakeholders want to fall back to the strength and credibility of a partner like Total, a global company with a strong commitment to Corporate Social Responsibility. We are strongly differentiated from smaller ESCOs offering energy services, but who don’t offer the same access to the same economies of scale. As a worldwide big company, we are also building more complete partnerships with our clients, leveraging for instance on our existing Corporate Social Responsibilities programs, mainly dedicated to access to energy.
Solar generation and electricity provision in general is highly dependent on the levelised cost of electricity. SunPower’s technology is reliable, efficient and highly differentiated, enabling us to offer hybrid and renewable energy at a very competitive cost per kWh. This gives us an advantage within the ESCO / capex free model, where finance is critical. We’re able to offer reliable technology guaranteed for 25 years, with a lower degradation of product.
TowerXchange: Have you experienced any instances of solar panel theft? How can this risk be mitigated?
Ingrid Jaumain, Head of Energy Solutions, Total Marketing & Services:
Like every other supplier, we have experienced some solar panel theft, in response to which we have developed a concrete based racking system that is really safe. Monitoring fuel is also key and our datalogger includes a sensor for the diesel tank.
TowerXchange: Quoting one of the towerco CEOs on TowerXchange’s advisory board “The problem is that there is a finite amount of GLA (Gross Leasable Area) at a site. A solar array already needs ~35sqm to supply a single tenant, add a second tenant and the space savings are minimal – you still need ~66sqm, 97sqm for a third.” How can solar power be made scalable and space-efficient so that towercos can add multiple tenants? And how can you blend in a community power proposition with its own unpredictability of peak load?
Ingrid Jaumain, Head of Energy Solutions, Total Marketing & Services:
I’d like to answer this question from both a technical and business model perspective.
From a technical perspective, we have developed and standardised a modular approach in addition to the SunPower technology advantage: for a 9 kWp installed capacity you need ~50 sqm versus more than 65 sqm with competitor products. For a given load you have a given combination of diesel, solar, batteries and monitoring – it’s easy to add more power to create the scalability required for co-location and growing community power requirements. We’ll always optimise site design and prioritise the telecom load, with backup power solutions with capacity to take on peak load – our hybrid solutions are often so optimised for solar and batteries that a little extra DG runtime whilst the site’s energy load is growing toward a modular upgrade can actually increase the lifetime of the genset.
From a business model perspective, we previously ran a programme called SunCash, a pay-as-you-go system similar to using phone cards with credit used to regulate energy demand at mini-grid sites so we can anticipate the maximum load we provide per day in kWh.
While community power is critical to sustainability, the priority will be given to telecom infrastructure – that’s the business imperative and SLAs need to be respected within those relationships.
In summary, modular technology, flexible business models, the right energy mix and energy optimisation are all important to scalability.
TowerXchange: What has changed which makes it time to stop talking about ESCOs and start deploying ESCOs?
Ingrid Jaumain, Head of Energy Solutions, Total Marketing & Services:
From my perspective, over the last 12-24 months emerging market telecoms have matured toward a preference to partner with specialists in dedicated fields. As towercos are present in more markets, and as stakeholders want to reconsider their capital investments and lighten their balance sheets, the time is right to start deploying ESCOs.
Now, according to what the client wants we also develop intermediary models, that’s the strength of Total Marketing & Services, being the operational arm of the Group; we are flexible, we permanently listen to the market and always adapt to our client needs.
Hybrid and renewable energy technology and solutions in general are more mature. For example, now everyone has an RMS, and data management is becoming more powerful. The tricky part of the ESCO proposition had been monitoring O&M to guarantee service, but we have both the field operations and technical skills to do this.
Having a trusted ESCO partner helps prospective towercos get a contract in greenfield markets.
I took Total’s proposition to the TowerXchange Meetup Asia 2014 and spoke to several stakeholders in energy services in India, for example, where the energy services market remains fragmented with no actor with both the required financial and operational capabilities to scale the model. Taking a global picture; many oil majors have largely exited from any direct presence in African marketing activities whilst operating through distributors – we’ve been able to purchase some of their assets. With 30-40% of opex coming from energy, you need to trust your ESCO partner, having direct affiliates with operations in the field is a competitive advantage.
TowerXchange: Towercos, who already own one in four of the world’s cell sites, are astute buyers – whilst some simply demand energy at a kWh price ESCOs find difficult to deliver, others don’t want to sign long term fixed price energy services agreements, they want to share in the energy efficiencies as technology improves. How do you think the ESCO business model will evolve to attract towercos to engage?
Ingrid Jaumain, Head of Energy Solutions, Total Marketing & Services:
Because of its size, Total’s worldwide financial capacity and credibility, Total has some interesting assets for this market segment.
In off-grid and unreliable grid markets, our long term contracts are based on formulas that provide flexibility as even we never know what the oil price will be tomorrow. We will often put in place the capability within a contract to revisit terms every two to three years – we want to stay committed business partners – we will find a way to structure a win-win agreement using innovative legal, business model and contract engineering.
Of course any capex-free solution requires a minimum level of commitment, but I think there is a space for a kWh offer, and if clients want an optimised financial solution, combining a leasing component or similar, that is also fine with us.
Total is a big company but we’re also pragmatic. We understand that ESCO agreements typically start with a pilot phase with a few sites to start with, which represents an opportunity to reassure everyone and an opportunity to demonstrate our value proposition.
TowerXchange: Finally, please sum up what differentiates Total from other companies aspiring to achieve scale in energy services for emerging market telecoms.
Ingrid Jaumain, Head of Energy Solutions, Total Marketing & Services:
We have local operations – thousands of people in the field in different countries in Africa, the Middle East, APAC, the Americas and the Caribbean.
We have a track record; we’re already a supplier of diesel to thousands of sites for fuel and solar equipment, which means we have knowledge and proven technology in-house which we can leverage to build a worldwide telecom energy operator proposition.
Total’s unique positioning is our commitment to better energy – we are the only worldwide multi-energy provider spanning solar, diesel and lubricants, owning directly the technology and products. “Think global, act local” could be a good summary: on an everyday basis we are people “rooted in the field”, putting operations at the core of all our business models and we are also committed to better energy, preparing the future!
TOTAL will be exhibiting at the 5th Annual TowerXchange Meetup Africa & Middle East, being held on 3-4 October at the Sandton Convention Centre, Johannesburg. Visit the website for more information
