Technical Review Middle East - Issue Three 2009 Power 60 IN THE PRESENT economic climate the fact that renewable energy can cut pollution levels may not be enough. As Phil Desmond discovers, some recent innovations in the field of cellular communications are being promoted not just as being better for the environment than conventional fuels but better for business too.
Take the Indian company VNL. The promise of its solarpowered GSM network for rural areas is zero operating expenditure. When a network is being extended to areas where average revenue per user is less than US$2 a month, that could be the difference between profit and loss. Using solar power can reduce or even remove the network’s need for diesel fuel, not to mention the costs (transport, maintenance and extra manpower) associated with the use of diesel. However, a few adjustments have been required. Anil Raj, CEO of the company, explains: “GSM is a 15-year old technology but we’ve applied today’s components - the level of sophistication available today to ensure power efficiency - and, more importantly, made some engineering compromises to allow us to get large wins in terms of power consumption, most notably on data speeds.” He continues: “This is optimised for services that are relevant to the rural market and that they can afford to pay.” Environment What this means in practice is that many mobile phone users in very isolated areas don’t require - for example - the sort of internet or email connectivity that urban Blackberry users need.
If data isn’t enabled, power costs go down and a solar-powered base station is rendered viable. And of course it’s good for the environment. As Raj points out: “Last year all the mobile networks in India consumed upwards of two billion litres of diesel.” A lot more than that amount will be required if estimates of well over another billion mobile subscribers worldwide in the next three years are correct; that’s about 150,000 new base stations a year. And most of them won’t be in New York, Paris or Riyadh. In fact some 70 per cent are likely to be in places with little or no access to the power grid. More reliable They won’t just require power for the base station itself; the whole site will need power to run cooling, lighting, heating and associated functions.
That too could be done with diesel but, as James Kan, marketing manager with Swedish company Flexenclosure, points out, the CO2 produced would be the annual equivalent of a year’s car emissions across London. As Flexenclosure’s name implies, it’s in the business of housing equipment. The promise of its solar-powered GSM network for rural areas is zero operating expenditure. Saving the planet can save you money The Middle East would seem to be a natural market for solar power, and renewable energy can still offer an attractive business model, particularly in IT.
“When you put up a base station in a rough environment,” says Kan, “it’s raining, or humid, or hot or cold. You need something to put it in. You also need a tower to have your antenna on.” And, he says, “a major challenge in the telecom industry for operators to maintain profitability is to reduce the site-related operational expenses.” Running a site on solar and wind power - albeit with diesel in reserve in case of breakdown - is potentially cheaper, more reliable and less polluting than transporting, maintaining and topping up diesel fuel. However, you do need is the right type of weather. Luckily, most future cellular growth markets tend to offer this. They will be, says, Kan, “in sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, India, China, Southeast Asia and Latin America.”
They will also be the more remote areas of those countries. Separate intelligence Hence Flexenclosure’s E-site, specially designed for areas on or near the earth’s sun-belt (the equator plus or minus 30 degrees). The solar component is quite straightforward, says Kan. “There’s no need to reinvent the wheel; solar panels today are commodities.” However, a wind generator that can work with as little as 2.2 metres of wind a second isn’t. So the company designed its own. Mounted on the base station tower, it has a diameter across the two blades of about ten metres, uses carbon fibre rather than glass fibre, and includes technology that allows it to ‘brake’ when the wind is too high; ironically, its efficiency means leaving it on all the time could provide too much energy to a shelter. The other addition is a separate intelligence called Diriflex. This ‘learns’ conditions - when traffic will peak and when the sun will go down for instance - and makes decisions on that basis. For example, the E-site does not offer power storage facilities as that adds equipment and expense. When there’s no sun the system switches to wind.
Should you turn off wind energy when it’s available simply because the batteries are fully charged? Why not use that energy to pre-cool the batteries in advance of peak demand? “Taking these small intelligent decisions we can reduce opex - the wear and tear on your equipment - and avoid using diesel but also use wind while it’s there,” says Kan, adding: “This means cost savings.” However, he argues, for this approach to work there has to be the type of managing intelligence that Diriflex can offer. Past efforts that simply placed renewable power generation equipment in remote areas were less efficient and cost-effective. Successful trial There are smaller-scale approaches too. For example, Sweden’s Suntrica is offering portable solar phone chargers. The advances that have brought flexible thin film panels have made the concept much more viable and thus applicable to the 600mn cellular users worldwide who have insufficient charging facilities.
“If you’re living plus or minus 30 degrees from the equator, it’s one sunshine day and you have a full charge,” says Suntrica CEO Jouko Häyrynen. The Mobile World Congress even brought us solar-powered phones, one in particular aimed at low-income markets. Made by China’s ZTE in partnership with Dutch solar technology specialist Intivation, it will see its first commercial use in the Pacific Islands. These initiatives may or may not succeed.
Flexenclosure, for example, has had a successful trial of its technology in Kenya but has not yet gone commercial with it. It needs partnerships and agreements with operators and base station providers like Ericsson or Huawei to make the system pay. However, if these initiatives do take off it will only be in part because they are good for the environment. All four offer the possibility of increased earnings for operators, and in an economic downturn that is likely to be the biggest attraction of all.
Siemens Energy has secured a US$130mn order to supply gas turbine packages to Saudi Arabia. The components are to be installed in the Hail Extension II and Al Qurayat Expansion II power plants. The purchasers are the Alfanar Construction Company and Saudi Services for Electromechanic Works (SSEM) respectively and they will perform the project on a turnkey basis for the Saudi Electric Company (SEC) utility. Delivery of the components is scheduled for 2010 and 2011.
Power and automation technology group, ABB, has won an order worth US$89mn from the Saudi Electricity Company to build a new substation to ensure reliable power supplies for the King Abdullah Financial District in Riyadh. The substation will be close to the financial centre and feed four smaller substations situated within the district. The project is expected to be completed in around 22 months.
Air blowers using internal compression instead of external compression can set a new standard for energy efficiency in the low-pressure market according to a new technical whitepaper from Atlas Copco’s oil-free air division. The whitepaper explains the differences between screw technology and the traditional ‘Roots’ type lobe technology and says that screw technology, which is used in Atlas Copco's ZS screw blowers, is on average 30 per cent more energy efficient. The manufacturer recently launched its full range of ZS screw blowers that are designed to improve energy efficiency for low-pressure applications and industries such as wastewater treatment and pneumatic conveying.
Plans for the zero-carbon Masdar City project are to be revised, with details of the amended master plan to be announced “imminently” according to Masdar's head of supply-chain management, Richard Reynolds. “We’ll finalise the revised Masdar plan fairly imminently, in the next two to three weeks,” Reynolds was quoted as saying by Bloomberg. “We’d only built part of it, so it made sense to stop and revisit.”
Saudi Arabia has taken the first step towards becoming energy efficient by holding its first ever public stakeholder meeting, the initial step in certifying an energy efficiency project under the rules of the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), in Jeddah recently.
Power generation equipment and services supplier, Alstom, has announced the strengthening of its renewables portfolio through a partnership with BrightSource Energy Inc. Alstom's move into the high-growth solar energy market comes in the form of an investment of up to US$55mn in BrightSource Energy Inc, with an equity stake that positions Alstom as one of the main shareholders in the company. 
A high level delegation representing the energy sector in Dubai has visited China to look at the latest global practices in the area of sustainable energy and the diversification of its sources. The delegation exchanged knowledge on the usage of conventional power plant technologies (using ultra super critical power plant-coal and synthetic gas) to generate electricity and produce desalinated water.
The Abu Dhabi Fund for Development (ADFD), a fund established by the government to aid the economic development of developing nations, has granted a loan to Bahrain worth US$50mn. The loan will be used to erect two electric transmission lines, of 220KV and 66KV each, to meet the increasing demand for electric power.
Abu Dhabi Transmission and Despatch (Transco) has placed an order with Siemens Energy to supply transformer substations and switchgear for the UAE power distribution network expansion project. The US$184mn order includes the turnkey supply of three 132/11 kV transformer substations and two 132/22 kV substations.
Power and automation technology group, ABB, has signed a service contract with the Gulf Cooperation Council Interconnection Authority (GCCIA) to provide maintenance for equipment and systems at the Gulf Interconnection Grid's newly constructed substations. The two-year contract is worth US$8.3mn and will aim to optimise the grid's reliability through regular maintenance and provide technical and emergency assistance when required.
Abu Dhabi is considering a proposal to use solar energy equipment on rooftops in the city to generate about 500MW of power, according to the executive director at the city's Executive Affairs Authority, David Scott.
Masdar, Abu Dhabi’s renewable and alternative energy technologies and solutions initiative, has appointed the bidding consortium of Total and Abengoa Solar as a partner to own, build and operate Shams 1, the world’s largest concentrated solar power plant (CSP). One of Masdar’s flagship projects and the first plant of its kind in the Middle East, Shams 1 will directly contribute towards Abu Dhabi’s target of achieving 7 per cent renewable energy power generation capacity by the year 2020.
Oman has awarded France's GDF Suez a US$1.7 billion contract to build two power plants. A tender board official told Reuters, “GDF Suez has signed a 15-year contract with the government in a BOOT (build, own, operate and transfer) model for which the company will spend 700 million rials."
An executive from state oil company Saudi Aramco has said that renewable sources could account for up to 10 per cent of Saudi Arabia's power output by 2020 with prices coming down and a regulatory framework in place.
ABB, THE LEADING power and automation technology group, has won an order worth US$38mn from the Saudi Electricity Company, Saudi Arabia’s national power transmission and distribution utility, to improve the efficiency of 22 power distribution substations.
THE MIDDLE EAST has the opportunity to become a boom centre for solar energy in the next 10 years, according to AT Kearney.
THE INCANDESCENT LIGHT bulb is disappearing from stores. It has long been superseded by a new generation of light sources. In tomorrow’s multimedia society colour displays the size of an apartment will generate crystal-clear images, and entire sports stadiums will be lit by high-performance lamps.
ARAMCO’S “FAIR” PRICE of US$75 a barrel has not yet been achieved but the giant Saudi economy is still surging ahead, prioritising the creation of new homes and diversified jobs in industry, social and other services to satisfy the needs of a 26mn young and wealthy population which grows at two per cent-plus every year. This means continued rapid progress on the development of the new Economic Cities, further and accelerated petrochemical and light industrial diversification, and the Middle East’s largest by far programme of dedicated passenger- and freightline rail construction. 
