Airtel to power base stations with solar energy

Bharti Airtel has announced a contract with Ericsson to upgrade an initial batch of 250 diesel-powered base stations in Nigeria with E-site, a new green energy solution from Flexenclosure.In a statement on Thursday, the company said the green initiative was another milestone in Airtels journey to deliver value to end users.The statement said, This will improve operations and minimise its environmental impact. The award winning E-site solution will enable Airtel to harness solar energy to power mobile base stations across Nigeria.Developed and manufactured by Flexenclosure, a Swedish specialist provider of intelligent site power management solutions for off-grid base station sites, it has proven to substantially reduce diesel consumption and CO2 emissions when compared to a 24/7 diesel-powered sites.The Joint Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer (International Business), Bharti Airtel, Mr. Manoj Kohli, said, We are happy to take the lead in deploying and rolling out state-of-the-art green power solutions and reducing our dependency on diesel. This latest initiative will not only enable us to significantly reduce operating costs, but also contribute to the reduction in the greenhouse effect.Going forward, we aim to introduce and take forward this green and efficient initiative in the rest of our operations.The statement further stated that the e-site was mainly powered by renewable energy sources (sun and wind) and used a battery bank for storage of energy, adding that its sophisticated control system ensured that maximum power was captured from renewable energy sources and that the use of the battery bank was highly efficient.The Head of Ericsson, sub-Saharan African Region, Mr. Lars Linden, said We are driving the implementation of this innovative solution in support of sustainability and the development of the networked society. The new green and highly cost efficient base station solution makes not only environmental sense, but also financial sense for our customers. enabling the efficient deployment of services to previously un-served or underserved areas.
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