GRIDSERVE® to partner with Bladon to minimise diesel consumption and opex

At the 2018 Meetup Africa, GRIDSERVE officially launched their 12kW Solar Energy Centre (SEC12) to industry, a best-in-class plug and play solar hybrid solution that slashes opex, minimises carbon footprint and greatly reduces ongoing maintenance requirements.

The company has now also signed an MOU with Bladon to bring to market a new generation of GRIDSERVE hybrid solutions that substitute diesel combustion engines with multi-fuel micro turbines, to further enhance SEC12’s benefits and allow operators and towercos to take additional steps toward a cleaner and more efficient energy future. TowerXchange talked with GRIDSERVE’s APAC CEO Heston Harper to hear about their experience at the Meetup Africa and find out how this partnership came out.

TowerXchange: Last month you presented your innovative 12kW Solar Energy Centre (SEC12) solution in Johannesburg at the TX Meetup Africa. How was your experience at the event and what feedback did you receive from the industry? 

The Africa show, where we participated as Diamond Sponsors, was a tremendous success for us. We had meetings with many of the most relevant people in this industry, and the official launch of our SEC12 hybrid system was very well received.

In fact, we are now in mature commercial discussions with a majority of the companies we wanted to meet at the event, and we are really looking forward to both Singapore and Dubai Meetups, where we will be announcing more exciting news and updates. 

TowerXchange: Right after the show, GRIDSERVE signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Bladon. How did this idea come up and what can we expect from this partnership?

Indeed, another great success of the show for us is how much we strengthened our relationship with Bladon. GRIDSERVE is actually a technology agnostic organisation, and we are always on the search for best-in-class technologies that can provide additional benefits. We started our conversations with Bladon about a year ago, as we felt their micro turbine solution could be a very good fit for our solar-battery-genset hybrid system, especially given maintenance cycles that are stated to be up to every 8,000 hours. 

Our stands at the show were actually next to each other, and we felt very comfortable participating at the event alongside Bladon, as it’s clear to us that our companies are working towards the same overarching goals, with a similar forward-thinking approach that attracted the interest of many participants at the Meetup. Bladon has invented, designed, and patented a micro turbine genset which is a clean burning, multi fuel, low noise and vibration  alternative to conventional diesel gensets. During the last day of the event, we dotted the I’s and crossed the T’s on an MOU, which we subsequently signed that lays out the basis for us integrating their technology into our hybrid powerplant in a way that provides maximum additional benefits. 

Our current SEC12 hybrid system integrates the latest advance in bifacial solar technologies, advanced lithium battery storage solutions, best-in-class DC gensets and a fuel tank, and all that comes with its own monitoring and management suite. Whilst we are extremely enthusiastic about the Bladon unit, traditional generators remain the industry standard, so we will of course continue to offer a combustion-engine option (with our preference being the same DC generator that we currently use). However, a major advantage of the Bladon unit is being able to run on multiple - and mixtures - of fuels including diesel, , kerosene and bio-diesel. A diesel-kerosene mix for example is particularly interesting as whilst this fuel will burn in a micro turbine, it is not suitable for a diesel engine hence the incentive for ‘would-be-thieves’ is significantly diminished.  

Perhaps the most impressive statistic of the Bladon unit is the 8,000-hour service interval. In our SEC12 hybrid format, if on a particular site we were already using solar energy and energy storage to reduce diesel consumption by 80%, this theoretically means that it would take over 4-years until the 8,000-hour service time for the micro turbine was reached. Now we are not seriously suggesting in reality we would choose to leave it that long, however it is clear that we are pushing the envelope as to the realms of what is possible. In turn this means we can dramatically change and reduce MNO and towerco site maintenance costs and requirements. With site visits often taking place once or twice a month, our initial plans are to hit the once a quarter milestone, then bi-annual, and we do believe that once a year or beyond in some cases is even possible.

TowerXchange: Could you summarize the drivers and goals of this collaboration and what will be its impact on the industry?

We are seeing a shift to lower CO² emission clean energy infrastructure in the telecoms industry, and the solution that will come out of this partnership will enable industry leaders to make significant in-roads towards that goal. At the Africa Meetup, we noticed that some of the biggest global operators and infrastructure developers are very concerned about their carbon footprint which is manifesting as a risk to constraining their growth. The Bladon addition to our SEC12 solution is exciting because whilst we will continue to aim to provide the majority of energy from solar energy, the balance will need to come from liquid or gaseous fuels. As the Bladon unit can operate on a range of fuel types, we envisage that whilst we will initially use fuel types in current supply chains, such as diesel or diesel/kerosene blends, over time these can be substituted with low or zero carbon fuels derived from non-fossil fuel sources.

Given our SEC12 solutions are designed to minimise operating costs, we also have the potential to mobilise a large pool of capital by offering or supporting financed turn-key solutions, such as ‘infrastructure as a service’, that can replace the need for MNOs or towercos to fund large capital deployments of equipment. We appreciate that there is projected to be a large growth in ESCO models, and we believe our turn-key combination of bankable products and associated services is extremely timely to help others to implement these models.

TowerXchange: How advanced is this new solution? 

The ink is still wet on the agreement and we are gaining momentum towards our deadlines. Bladon has two units in production that are earmarked for us: the first one will be shipped to Dubai and will be on display at the TowerXchange MENA Meetup. The second one is going to be installed in our UK headquarters, so we can really put it through its paces. We are very excited about the outcome and expect to be qualifying some game changing performance statistics.

Furthermore, beyond the initial deployments where the focus is ‘tower power’ we also see opportunities to add additional infrastructure in due course that can open additional business models and opportunities – that’s all I am able to say on this at the moment, but I really do suggest you watch this space!

TowerXchange: You have a vast, global experience with energy integration and now you are pushing renewable solutions across the world. What are the main drivers for renewables in telecoms and what are the most proactive markets in terms of exploring sustainable alternatives?

Whereas only a few years ago the driver for clean energy solutions may have sat in the ‘corporate social responsibility’ arena, incredible cost reductions for both solar energy and energy storage in the last few years have completely changed the game, such that the main driver of our business case for solar is one of fundamental economics: it’s a cheaper form of energy that gets replenished onsite every day. 

The sun is obviously a ‘free’ feedstock and the more you integrate that ‘free’ energy into your power infrastructure, the cheaper your overall cost of energy becomes. We have been able to deliver dependable, low cost and clean energy by marrying solar with storage, gensets and now micro turbines, which provides dependability at a lower energy cost in comparison to ‘old sunlight’ derived fuels such as diesel. 

TowerXchange: Based on your global experience, which are the most attractive markets for energy providers in Asia and what are the main opportunities?

We have a large global pipeline and we are now actively engaged with a significant number of end users across multiple Asian territories. To provide you a flavour we have maturing discussions in Malaysia, New Zealand, Australia, the Pacific Islands, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos to name a few!