Ausonia: the field-proven efficiency in powering sites through Hybrid Solar DC Gensets, even in OPEX model

With 85 years of experience in the power business and thousands of installations across the globe, Italian company Ausonia offers a wide portfolio of energy solutions to help African MNOs and towercos reduce fuel consumption and maintenance costs. To cater to the evolving demands of the industry, Ausonia has also created its own energy service company (ESCO) known as MediPower, to provide energy-as-a-service, based on the opex model. With both capex and opex solutions available and against the backdrop of various regional market drivers, Ausonia looks to continuously adapt its offerings to best serve its customers.

TowerXchange: Could you please introduce yourself, your role and background?

I have over 13 years of experience in the power business, including business development and sales in different geographical areas (EMEA, Americas, Asia and Oceania). I joined Ausonia in 2012, when the CEO, Massimo Ombra, asked me to help him launch the new Hybrid and High Efficiency DC gensets portfolio recently designed by the company to meet the needs of the telecom industry in lowering opex and TCO.

Over the years, we have worked with tens of MNOs and towercos across the globe and came to understand their specific power needs to identify the right energy solutions for their sites. As a result of our efforts and partnerships with our clients, we have one of the most acclaimed portfolios of AC and DC genset solutions in the telecom industry, with thousands of installations in different countries and strong references, even among the ESCO community.

TowerXchange: For those that might not be familiar with Ausonia, please tell us about the company and the customers you work with. 

If you ask any power specialist working in our home market (Italy), they will certainly know Ausonia. In fact, we were the first company in Italy to manufacture generating sets and we are constantly expanding our footprint in the local market. On top of this, the know-how and experience we have accumulated over many years of business helped the company achieve a high level of specialisation and quality, such that our products today are widely requested by different industries and customers.

We are very active in sectors where power is a critical issue. Our gensets are used to power drilling stations for the oil and gas industry from Sub-Saharan Africa to Central Asia, to ensure backup power to hospitals, airports and industrial sites from South East Asia to Latin America. We even serve NATO with gensets for their military applications.

In the telecom industry, Ausonia has a long history of success, with thousands of generators installed worldwide. We receive positive feedback year-on-year since 2003 by our controlled ESCO known as MediPower, which uses Ausonia gensets to perform their services under the Power Lease Agreements signed with all the MNOs operating in Italian territory (Vodafone, TIM, Wind 3).

The capability to develop, design, manufacture and offer energy solutions to our customers, starting from a basic capex offer to a pure opex business model represents a unique value proposition in the telecom market. This gives new potential customers a strong sense of confidence, as they see us not only as a manufacturer of power solutions, but also as the first user of our own products.

TowerXchange: Specifically, what is your footprint in Africa and what are some key issues and challenges your clients face in this region?

Ausonia started looking at Africa in the seventies, when the company was strengthening its focus on the nearest export markets. We approached various customers in the region, from Morocco to Egypt, to the Sudan, from Ethiopia to Nigeria and Zimbabwe, and we realised their power requirements were very specific and could not be standardised.

Since then, we have delivered generators to companies in Sudan, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Egypt, Mozambique, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Algeria, Liberia, Gabon, DRC and many other countries. Today we are in discussions with major regional players in the telecom industry for the supply of generators to power their off-grid and poor-grid sites.

At this time, the main concern is around the opex of their traditional power solutions and everyone is trying to understand what would be the best energy solution to be deployed on each site, with the ability to achieve the lowest capex and the highest opex reduction. Within this context, Ausonia is an ideal energy partner as we have the skills and expertise to design customised and efficient energy solutions in line with their technical and financial needs, supporting them also with local maintenance teams and warranty.

Additionally, our energy solutions can be equipped with anti-theft devices which help our customers in reducing the risks connected to robbery of fuel, batteries and other components of the power systems, thereby further increasing their savings on the capex replacements and making our proposals more attractive.

TowerXchange: Would you be able to share one or two examples of how you’ve helped clients address their energy/uptime requirements?

In several countries we experienced situations where many customers tend to “oversize” their power systems compared to the real power consumption of their equipment on site. We conducted several site surveys with our technicians and found that in some cases the customer could get to the target of improving efficiency and reducing opex by simply replacing the existing genset with a new one of smaller capacity or by installing a variable speed DC genset.

In other cases, we helped the customer to hybridise the site by adding rectifiers and batteries or by totally replacing the existing set up with a brand new hybrid power system, integrating a variable speed DC genset with deep-cycle batteries in an all-in-one product.

We also helped customers in solving critical problems with the very high costs related to refuelling and maintenance of off-grid and remote sites. In those cases, customers used to go to the sites once a month, with employees or contractors literally carrying heavy fuel canisters on their shoulders while climbing hills and mountains, or accessing sites only after having paid mandatory fees to local gangs. On these types of sites, in some case we have deployed our Dual Variable Speed DC Generators system, which has been able to reduce fuel consumption up to 63%, reducing the number of site visits by 88% and dropping down the TCO by 51%, with a payback period of only 11 months, guaranteeing a power availability rate close to 99.99%. In some other cases, we have deployed our newest Hybrid Solar DC Gensets range, being able to integrate different energy sources inputs (Solar, Grid & DG) into one single product with small footprint, excellent operational savings and with even an integrated DC cooled cabinet, housing the telecommunications equipment on racks and further reducing the CAPEX investments of our customers.

TowerXchange: What do you think is the Ausonia advantage?

There are multiple advantages in selecting Ausonia as an energy partner. On top of what I said earlier about our history and know how, our products offer several configurations of energy solutions which, thanks to a significant reduction in the fuel consumption and to different capacities of integrated fuel tanks, can extend the refuelling intervals up to three to four months.

Moreover, our high efficiency solutions can be configured to require preventive maintenance after as many as 2,000 running hours, equivalent to more than 80 days, allowing customers to schedule only four or five site maintenance/refuelling visits per year, with great savings in yearly opex.

Additionally, our power units can be controlled and managed remotely through a dedicated web-based system, which can be integrated to the network operation centre (NOC) of the customer for managing alarms tracking, ticketing and escalation.

Last but not least, thanks to the scalability of our modular solutions, we can deliver systems to power multi-tenant sites, in which a new operator can be added and billed singularly for its energy consumption.

Considering all this, if our customers compare our DC gensets solutions with the traditional solutions installed around the globe, they realise that the payback period is often less than one year and the product lifetime typically goes over five years, making it an excellent investment, even looking at short-term business plans.

TowerXchange: Lastly, what is the vision for the company, and for Ausonia’s presence in the African region moving forward?

Being a proactive and flexible company, we see great opportunities of growth in Africa, especially in countries where telecom players need to urgently go through a renovation of their power assets, or where the network expansion is mandatory to comply with local strategies or simply to follow the indications given by the local regulators.

In Africa different scenarios are possible. We see opportunities in supplying our energy solutions directly to the MNOs or to local and regional towercos. But there is also increasing attention and study towards the power lease offers (energy-as-a-service), in which Ausonia Group can play a direct role by offering its local presence in the market, as well as partnering with local managed service providers (MSPs) who want to add something more to their current service offerings.

The market in Africa is changing fast and new scenarios and players are emerging, and this naturally lends to new energy requirements which Ausonia is ready to follow closely, by adapting our energy solutions portfolio to new power demands, more specific technical requirements and efficient technologies.