Improving the reliability, efficiency and scalability of power provision at on and off-grid cell sites

Italian diesel genset manufacturer, Ausonia and their ESCO subsidiary Medipower have developed a strong reputation for the reliability of their energy solutions and high performance against service level agreements. The scalability of their solutions offer significant advantages to customers who forecast the addition of further tenants to their sites, whilst their experience gleaned through their ESCO model has given the company real world experience of the in the field challenges their clients face. We spoke with Medipower President, Massimo Ombra to learn more about Ausonia and Medipower’s product and service offerings and how they have been adapted to meet the needs of global tower owners.

TowerXchange: Please introduce Ausonia and Medipower – where do your companies fit in the telecoms infrastructure ecosystem?

Both companies belong to a group which has been one of the major players in the telecom industry for many years. Ausonia was created in 1932 and as such, benefits from a long tradition in the production of diesel generators, not only for telecoms, but also for other important industries: oil and gas, mining, transportation, and even military defence, in which we drive the technology standards at worldwide level. For the telecom industry we have developed a wide range of genset solutions, for use as a main energy source or as backup power, for BTS, BSC, MSC, data centres and disaster and recovery applications. Being an Italian company with particular attention given to detail and quality, we are strongly focused on developing innovative and customised solutions, as recently evidenced by our wide portfolio of High Efficiency DC Gensets, Hybrid Power Systems and No-Break Power Solutions, providing significant operational advantages and costs reduction.

In 2003 we increased our service capabilities through the creation of our own ESCO, named MediPower, which is mainly focussed on providing energy supply services on an opex model to off-grid BTS sites, where our own Ausonia products are installed.

TowerXchange: The first question our readers will want to know is ‘how proven is the solution in the field’ – please tell us about the performance of your High Efficiency Gensets and Hybrid Integrated Modules in the field – who is using these solutions and what results have been achieved?

The reliability and performance of our genset solutions are proven by the fact that, since 2003, we have periodically renewed our energy supply contracts with all four Italian MNOs (Vodafone, TIM, Wind and H3G), without any period of service discontinuation so far. This clearly shows that MNOs are satisfied with the energy services we provide to their network of sites and with the power availability we guarantee. Additionally, our ability to be the first user of our products allows us to get direct experience from the field and enables us to develop an excellent track record in maximising the performance and reliability of our solutions.

Within this scenario, we have developed our series of High Efficiency solutions, whose core technology is a variable speed DC generator which is able to provide a very significant reduction in fuel consumption and opex, independently from its configuration - either standalone for continuous operation (24/7) or integrated with deep cycling batteries. We initially deployed the new technology in the Italian off-grid BTS network and today we estimate that approximately 80% of it is powered by us through the opex model. Encouraged by these successes, different MNOs and ESCOs have selected our systems to power their sites in Africa, LatAm, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, obtaining more than 60% in opex savings and more than 50% in TCO reduction.

TowerXchange: How have your solutions’ design evolved to ease delivery and simplify installation?

Being one of the main users of the products we directly design and produce, we have developed our genset solutions following a modular approach, in order to facilitate the scalability of the system and to simplify all operational activities on site, from delivery to installation.

All our solutions can be disassembled into lower weight modules in order to be transportable not only on small boats and helicopters, but also carryable by animals or manpower. Once on site, the installation is very quick and easy, typically less than 6-8 hours are needed to reassemble the unit and to perform installation and commissioning activities. Considering all this, we can definitively say that our genset systems, regardless of the configurations we can offer, are all plug and play solutions.

TowerXchange: Towerco SLAs often demand 99.9% or higher uptime – tell us about the reliability and autonomy of your solutions.

As explained before, the reliability of our systems is proven by our 13 years of offering an opex model. When you offer energy as a service, you have to be 100% confident of the quality and reliability of the power systems deployed on site - unpredictable costs due to system failures and downtime periods heavily affect company financials, putting profits of the business at risk.

The 99.9% uptime level requested by towercos can only be met if the power systems installed on site are robust and designed to provide redundancy, in order to avoid a single power failure taking the BTS down and thus decreasing your uptime performances. Our Hybrid Integrated Modules and, even more specifically, our Dual DC genset system, have been designed to take into consideration such energy service exigencies, being conscious that the impact of unmatched SLA expectations can seriously damage a vendor’s reputation.

TowerXchange: How is your solution scalable to accommodate the increasing power requirements as multiple tenants are added to a site?

Being in daily contact with MNOs, towercos and ESCOs, we are perfectly aware of their increasing requirement for power solutions that are immediately ready for multi-tenancy agreements. On this basis, we have designed specific modular products which are ready to manage higher loads without affecting the fuel efficiency of the power system, whilst at the same time being equipped with a ready-to-use DC distribution board for any co-siting exigency, along with its necessary energy metering tool.

One of these products consists of a power system which integrates, in one single compact unit, two variable speed DC generators in 1+1 configuration set-up, capable of running efficiently in continuous operation by adjusting the speed of its engines, according to the actual site load. As new tenants are added to the site, this system automatically increases the engine speed to cope with the increased power requirement, always following the most efficient point of the power curve of the engine. It’s the solution which our customers appreciate the most when they want to deploy a power system on a site which, in the future, could host more tenants. If this happens, they don’t have to change or upgrade their existing power system as the Dual Gensets system will immediately take care of the increased power demand, even being capable of automatically running the two gensets in parallel mode, if site load is temporarily higher than each genset’s rated capacity. On top of this, the system also provides total redundancy, very high power availability levels, long maintenance intervals of up to three months and high efficiency performances.

TowerXchange: How have your solutions been ‘hardened’ to protect against fuel and equipment theft?

Thanks to our direct experience in the field and thus our knowledge of the main security issues, we have worked on a number of levels in order to increase the entire system security, from the improvement in the mechanical aspects, to the development of new software releases for our control boards, up to the development of an optimal remote management system for the NOC.

I can start by saying that all access doors of our gensets are protected by double key locks and can be provided with additional external metal bars equipped with unbreakable padlocks. All doors, including the fuel inlet door, are equipped with magnetic sensors for unauthorised opening detection and with remote alarm dispatching via SMS and/or TCP/IP.  Moreover, the entire canopy parts are welded, with a total absence of externals screws, bolts or rivets.

Even the deep cycle batteries compartment and the starting battery of our hybrid systems can be duly protected with security devices which do not allow theft of these very attractive elements.

On top of this, the fuel tank, which could be a double wall type up to 2000 litres, is integrated within the system itself, not allowing any external pipe connection. The fuel inlet is also equipped with double key locks and provided with mechanical anti-siphoning traps to avoid external pipe intrusion. Additionally, an alarm is sent remotely in the event that the controller detects an abnormal decrease of the fuel level in the tank.

To increase the control over the unit from afar, our systems are equipped with GPS complete with geo-fencing features, which is able to pre-set the permitted location of the system and which will send a remote alarm any time the unit is moved from its original place of installation.

Last but not least, the lifting points can be dismounted after the installation activities and, once the modular unit is assembled on site, an internal blocking system will unify the different modules together, making the overall system too heavy to be easily removed as one single piece.

TowerXchange: What is the typical asset life cycle of your High Efficiency Gensets and how can it be maximised?

The typical lifecycle of our High Efficiency Gensets goes from five to ten years, depending on the chosen system configuration and its operational use. The lifecycle can be extended by integrating the system with renewable energy sources (solar and/or wind), as we offer for our range of hybrid solutions, in which solar and wind power input can be added, along with their dedicated control system.

TowerXchange: What warrantee and after sales support do you offer?

We usually offer a warrantee period of up to two years, which can be further extended depending on specific agreements with our customers and on the operational use of the power systems.

Due to the high accessibility level we created in the system configuration, all our high efficiency and hybrid solutions can be easily maintained by any technician used to working with standard AC gensets and, additionally, the main components of our systems are selected to take into account the availability of relevant parts worldwide, to further simplify the local parts provisioning for maintenance. Moreover, as we enter new countries with our power systems, we provide suitable service support through agreements with local partners. To be a service partner, companies must be capable of covering the entire territory, they must have direct and qualified experience with genset installation and maintenance operations, and, among other required skills, they have to be used to coping the needs and expected service levels of MNOs.

As you can imagine, we select our local partners very carefully in terms of reliability and capability, as we are not only interested in guaranteeing our customers proper after-sales support locally, but we are also interested in the possibility of introducing our opex business model (where all capex investments and operational costs are on our side) to that country.

TowerXchange: Having launched Medipower in 2003, what has been MNOs’ and towercos’ response to opex-led and leasing business models? Are you providing a lot of equipment on this basis, or is the majority still capital purchases?

We started our opex model activities in 2003 when we launched MediPower, which is now the undisputed leader in Italy for energy supply services based on such a commercial approach. Up to now, in foreign countries most of our business has been via the capex model, but due to our successful service organisation and easy replication in other countries, MNOs and towercos are showing more and more interest in the opex model.

TowerXchange: Finally, please sum up how you would differentiate your solution from your competitors’?

One of our main distinctive factors is that, within our group of companies, we combine together qualified engineering skills, customised system production and full service operation capabilities for an opex model. This allows us to have a complete view of the Total Cost of Ownership of the power system and correctly adjust all relevant cost drivers, starting from the design of the products up to their operational performance, during the entire lifecycle of the system. Additionally, our organisation allows us to present a high level of commercial flexibility in terms of possible business models to be offered, going from pure capex to pure opex, especially if we are compared to players which are typically limited to product sales or service activities only.

Moreover, having been historically focussed on driving technology innovation in our business of diesel generators, we have been capable of developing a range of variable speed DC generators which, on their own, can provide the same high efficiency level of a hybrid system, even without operating the genset in cycling mode with a battery bank, which all other genset manufacturers are forced to do in order to achieve fuel efficiency. Consequently, in our case, the cycling operation with batteries can be used to further extend the already long lifetime of our power systems and offers the possibility of integrating different energy sources (solar, wind and/or mains) in one single integrated power solution.