GPM successfully convened its first Francophone Regional Working Group in Dakar, Senegal on 7 & 8 November 2013. Co-hosted by TIGO Senegal, a Millicom Group operator, it was attended by 53 people across 30 organisations including MNOs, ESCOs, vendors, solution integrators, development organisations and government regulators.
Day one – 7th Nov:
Opening Session:
The opening session of the day hosted key personnel from IFC, TIGO and the Ministry of ICT, Senegal. Ferdous Mottakin, programme manager of GPM, started the session with a welcome note.
Jerome Cretegny, IFC Senegal’s Principal Country Manager briefed the group about the role of IFC in supporting GSMA’s GPM programme in the promotion of green power adoption. Cretegny mentioned the impact created so far as well as the need for more industry-wide efforts to drive the conversion to green power for telecoms and reach the objective of 40,000 green sites.
Samba Koita, CTO of TIGO Senegal, briefed about their network expansion plans and green power strategy in order to achieve OPEX efficiency and reduce carbon footprint. He stressed the need for industry collaborations to drive the adoption of green telecoms and welcomed the participants for fruitful discussions during the following sessions of the working group.
Modou Mamoune NGOM, Director, Ministère Communication et Economie Numérique (MCEN), reinforced the need for government intervention in promoting renewable energies and stressed that renewable energy sources such as solar are more reliable and predictable for efficient operations across industry. He also emphasised GPM’s role in bringing innovative research and analysis, and conveyed the need for technical and financial assistance in driving the adoption of green telecoms in order to achieve economic, environmental and social benefits.
The opening session concluded with a presentation from Satish Kumar, GPM’s Africa Project Manager, looking at the opportunities and prospects for green telecoms in the Francophone Africa region.
The second session started with a moderated open discussion around green power adoption and challenges faced by the mobile network operators in the region. The open discussion was followed by MNO presentations and panel discussion.
MNO Panel:
In the MNO panel session we had two panellists – Samba Koita, CTO, TIGO Senegal and Serge Assande, CTO, GreenN Cote d’ Ivoire. The session started with a presentation from Samba Koita presenting the overall network expansion strategy of TIGO Senegal and their green power initiatives and deployment plans over the next 4 years. He also explained Tigo’s process in selecting vendors and trialling alternative RE sources for their sites.
Serge Assande, briefly explained the situation in Cote d’Ivoire and their overall approach to energy provision and the role of green power in reducing OPEX and carbon footprint of the network. He emphasized that finance is a key barrier for growing the adoption of green power in telecoms.
The discussions were focused around outsourcing – tower and energy, deployment challenges including technical resources, unfavourable tax regulations and their impact on scaling the adoption of green power alternatives for powering the network. On the outsourcing, we had mixed response with GreenN in more inclination towards outsourcing while TIGO with a focus on mixed approach.
Technology Panel:
The third session of the day started after the lunch break, which was sponsored by ENERSYS, with presentations from technology and solution providers followed by a panel discussion.
Ann Louise Johansson, VP Strategy of Flexenclosure, opened the session with a presentation on their solutions and offerings ranging from standalone off-grid applications, grid connected solutions and high-capacity solutions, to datacentre applications.
Del Jeffery, Customer Engagement Manager from PowerOasis, presented their solutions and offerings followed by detailed deployment approach and best practices with supporting deployment case studies across Africa.
Boubacar Sow, Director of SunPower Corp, explained their approach to business in driving solar deployments across Africa and the globe. He also focused on industry trends, challenges and expectations from various stakeholders including the government, financing institutes and mobile network operators.
The panel discussion focused on various supply side factors in driving green telecoms adoption including the impact of outsourcing, business models, pricing and local technical support.
Technology Development:
The final session of the day focused specific technology development and brought in three battery technologies and manufacturers – Enersys, GE and Northstar – to present on various storage challenges and their technology addressing these challenges. The session focused technology and product development trends in telecom storage applications.
Wouter Vink, of Enersys, provided a brief on their battery portfolio and introduced their new battery technology and products specifically designed for telecom hybrid power applications. He also compared their new products against traditional telecom storage technologies and highlighted the benefits in terms of high storage density, high cycle life and temperature endurance.
Obinna Onuchuckwu, of GE Battery, briefly presented on their differentiating technology and how their battery management system addresses many operating challenges faced by mobile network operators in the region.
Amine Zahr, of NorthStar battery, presented on the emerging trends in storage techniques in the telecom industry and provided a brief of their energy storage technology stressing on storage efficiency and battery life as the most critical technology parameters that have great impact on the TCO of the system. He also showcased temperature controlled and theft preventing battery cabinet which can add significant value for operations.
The first day concluded post the technology development session, and was followed by a cocktail networking evening arranged by the co-host TIGO, Senegal.
Day two – 8th Nov:
The second day of the working group focused on energy management and outsourcing models for mobile network operators.
Following Ferdous Mottakin’s introduction to the GPM’s Feasibility Studies which aim at presenting MNOs with the best energy management solutions for their specific networks to maximise their ROI, Jonas Hogstrom from Heliocentris, presented their energy management solutions for MNOs and TowerCos. He highlighted the difficulty in convincing MNOs of the benefits of energy management and had therefore to look into different models before developing a solution focusing on running the site. The solutions are there, now what remains to find is the financing.
The conversation then moved on to explore community power models. Helene Smertnik, MECS Market Intelligence Analyst, presented the Mobile Enabled Community Services programme. The ESCo model, providing energy to the tower as well as to the community, is still in its early days. However, there is an opportunity to seize for operators as one of the largest and most expanded infrastructure but also retail network, reaching into including the most remote areas off the electricity.
Ninon Tollard from Schneider Electric’s BipBop programme elaborated on this opportunity for providing access to energy and its strong economic, social and environmental impact to off-grid communities.
The question as to whether this activity should be considered as purely “charitable”, part of the CSR of MNOs or as a business activity was raised and Leo Blyth, from IFC Lighting Africa, explained that the response should be the latter, referring to the GSMA’s studies on the amount that low-income communities were willing to pay/are paying to charge their phone. MNOs in the room were convinced of the positive impact and the potential ARPU increase it would provide but there obstacles remain, such as the need for more knowledge sharing as there are many options; the CAPEX investment required and the internal decision making.
The second part of the day was dedicated to GPM’s training on the HOMER software. The training focused on a step-by-step approach to green power design and analysis for better understanding of technical and financial feasibility.