Wind and Solar Power

Green base stations, for the past 20 years, have normally meant big base stations with some incremental savings in power consumption. However things are starting to change. China Mobile has now deployed more than 8500 base stations in rural provinces with solar panels. A few Indian tower operators are also deploying large numbers....Bharti Infratel is a prime example.

Solar power for GSM base stations seems to be possible nowadays due to the efficiency gained with simple implementation of a GMSK amplifier, with a stripped-down, low capacity baseband processor and very simple, low-cost masts (instead of major-league towers).

Companies such as VNL are now deploying low-power GSM base stations in India, with less than 50 mW power consumption total, including a microwave backhaul link.

We're starting to predict steady growth of the solar power approach, moving up from GSM to more advanced base stations as the cost of solar panels comes down and the cost of diesel fuel rises.