TechPulse 360

Solar and wind-powered cellular base stations are finally taking off. Next up: hydrogen fuel cells, compressed air storage and lithium ion batteries.

A push for renewable-energy base stations appears to be gaining momentum in the telecom industry, with routers and other network-access gear likely to follow suit and go green someday.

The adoption of solar and wind powered cellular base stations seems to be picking up as solar prices fall.

The market acceptance is fueled by lower costs, particular after last year’s sharp fall in solar panels prices. But system engineering is making great strides as well, translating higher solar and wind energy efficiencies into higher overall product performance.

The expanding market is the reflection of a multi-year push by the telecommunications industry for alternative power – and in that sense it mirrors the initiatives of other industry trying to grasp the energy realities of the 21^st Century.

But the story has a unique twist. The industry has an obvious starting point: the remote cellular base stations springing up in hard-to-reach developing communities, where trucking in fuel for diesel generators is expensive.

Until recently, solar and wind energy were the two technologies mature enough for deployment. Still, high costs caused the market to evolve slowly, with only a few hundred solar base stations sold a year.

That changed last year. With the dramatic price reductions in solar panels during 2009, the market accelerated. As many as 5,000 solar powered based stations now operate around the world, and, by 2012, this is estimated to balloon to more than 100,000.

“We see a dramatic shift in the market,” says Frederic Wauquiez, a marketing director for alternative energy programs at Alcatel-Lucent. Low-cost electricity from the grid is holding back buying in developed countries, but places such as India, China and Africa are showing growth.

With that success, new technologies are coming to market. Among the leaders are Motorola, which in the past year more than doubled the base stations using hydrogen fuel cells for back-up power at its SINE network in Denmark. More than 100 are in service.

Sprint also employs at least 250 hydrogen fuels cells for back-up power at its cellular towers with technology from ReliOn of Spokane and Altergy. The company received a $7.3 million Energy Department grant to boost its back-up power capability to 72 hours from 15.

Alcatel-Lucent is working with fuel cells in limited trails and says the technology will be the next it introduces. The company’s position is that fuel cells will never be the sole source of base-station power, Wauquiez says. The economics are not there when hydrogen must be carted into a remote site, he says.

At the same time, the French company is working with compressed-air energy storage, advanced vertical-axis wind turbines and lithium-ion batteries. Compressed air will come, Wauquiez says, but the efficiency is low. Advanced turbine designs are “interesting,” and Alcatel-Lucent has battery manufacturers trying to develop the right battery for its needs, he says.

Alcatel-Lucent finds the alternative fuels market important enough to mention in the Corporate Social Responsibility Report it issued last week. The company estimates it has as many as 340 alternative-fuel energy base stations in the field, a 40 percent increase in a year and a more upbeat achievement than the report’s 30 percent target.

So what is this year’s objective? Wauquiez won’t say. It is still being hashed out, he said, but it will be more ambitious than in 2009. Perhaps this confidence is a sign renewable energy products really do have a foothold in the industry.