The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy of the Indian government is likely to come out with a mandate that would require telecom operators to transform their cellphone towers from being powered by diesel generators to solar panels.
The ministry had earlier invited proposals for establishing power supply technologies based on renewable energy sources other than solar and wind. However, now it seems that the ministry would go ahead with solar-based power systems and is looking to incorporate this project into India’s National Solar Mission which aims at setting up 20,000MW of solar power capacity by 2022. Such a move would not only help the government achieve this ambitious goal but would also allow the ministry get subsidies for the telecom and tower operators for installation of solar power systems.
India has more than 250,000 cellphone towers which consume 3-5 kilowatts power depending on the number of operators using the tower. These towers consume about 2 billion litres (about 530 million gallons) of diesel every year. (more…)