GREEN MOBILE TOWERS TO REDUCE CARBON EMISSION: ESTIMATION

Author : Jacob Abraham, Sl. Grd. Lecturer, Department of Electronics, BPC College, Piravom
Ernakulam Dist., Kerala - 686664, tjacobabra@gmail.com

ABSTRACT
Global warming is caused by the emission of
Reports show that telecom industry is the second largest
green house gases.70 % of the totally emitted green house
consumer of diesel / energy in India after Indian
gas is carbon. In India mobile communication is expanding
railways.
to the rural areas, where power is a major problem ,so many
of the service providers depend on diesel generator to
Co2 emisions world-wide
power the tower. The carbon emitted by diesel generator is
very high and disastrous. The paper tries to describe the 1989
need of powering towers using alternate energy sources 21.6
and explains the amount of carbon that can be prevented
from entering the atmosphere. 1992 21.8
Key Words : Green Mobile Towers, Carbon emission, Cost Effectivness
1995 22.4
1. INTRODUCTION
Mobile telephony has developed very rapidly over 1998 23.2
the past ten years. It is now part of the basic equipment of
modern life and over 2 billion phones are in use world wide. 2001 23.5
With the increase in cell phone communication number of
cell towers getting installed is also increasing every day. In
2004 24.2
India there are nearly 3 lakh towers.[1] Cellular towers are a
key infrastructure element used to propagate radio
frequency signal and in a cellular infrastructure, cellular 2007 25.5
tower plays the key role of handing over the call from cell to
cell to locate the mobile subscriber and terminate the call. 2010 27

In India telecom infrastructure is expanding into 20.0 21.0 22.0 23.0 24.0 25.0 26.0 27.0 28.0
rural areas where constant and consistent electricity supply
is either inadequate or non - existent. Power supply to these Most of the generators associated with mobile
sites is often the key issue for service providers [2] , if grid towers are 25 kVA capacity, and these generators
connection is delayed or electricity supply expected to be require 9 liters of diesel for running one hour. On an
very intermittent generators are often installed and used. average each generator works for nearly 8 hours a day
Generally at the bottom of cell tower there are generators and cosumes 72 liters of diesel a day. Studies [4] shows
running on diesel that burning of one litre of diesel will produce 2.6 kg of
CO2. This says that the amount of carbon emitted by a
single mobile tower run using diesel generator is around
2. PROBLEM 187 kg , which means a minimum of 5.2 million kg of
Global warming is caused by the emission of green CO2 is emitted into environment everyday in India.
house gases [3] , 70 % of the totally emitted green house gas
is CO2. Carbon is mainly created by burning fuels like diesel
30kg
,petrol gas etc. The CO2 is released to the atmosphere where amount of CO2 emitted
it remains for 150 to 200 years, this leads to an increasing annualy / subscriber, if base station
powered by diesel generator
concentration of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere which in
turn causes the average temperature on earth to increase . amount of CO2 emitted / subscriber
if Base station powered
25kg
Efforts have been taken to reduce the annual global CO2 by Solar cell

from 30 gigaton in 2009 to 20 gigaton by 2050 and then to

10 gigaton by year 2100.

3kg

3. ESTIMATING CO2 . 2kg

In India there are about 3 lakh mobile towers

GSM 3G
providing mobile service to nearly 45 crore subscribers. Subscriber Subscriber
 Studies show that the annual CO2 emission per nearly 3 lakh towers and the running cost for all of them put
average GSM subscriber is about 25 kg and for a 3G together is found to be 6750 crores. The installation cost of
subscriber is about 30 kg. a 25 KVA solar power generator along with solar cell, and
storage battery is around 1.5 corers. The running cost is
almost nill, since the energy source is sun light .In solar
powered mobile towers, VRB (vanadium based red ox)
4. ZERO CO2 EMISSION SOURCE flow battery , is used which has a life of 8 years.
At noon on a cloudless day, sunlight provides
about 1000w of power on each square meter on earths
surface. The solar cell collects this energy and converts
a portion of it into usable electricity. Solar is a zero CO2

Running cost & cost of installation

emission source of energy [5] . Estimates show that by
l
replacing diesel generators with solar panels in mobile se
y die
towers nearly 5 million kg of CO2 could be prevented re db
from entering the atmosphere o we
Ap
BT

Rs. Crores
Co2 Emmision from various segments BTA powered by Solar
of mobile communication
80%

10%
5%

3%

2%
Power Summary
60%

0 4 8 12 16 20 24 28
Operating Years
50%

6. CONCLUSION
20%
Cellular network
Consumption

Estimates show that by replacing diesel

generators with solar power generators in mobile towers
10%

nearly 5 million tons of carbon could be prevented from

entering the atmosphere and also Rs 6750 /- crores can be
saved by means of consumption of diesel which is used as
Subscriber end

raw material. In India government has announced a

Base station anteena

Back office

other usable areas

Switching network

scheme of giving back Rs 50 lakh per installation for

mobile towers running on renewable energy source over a
period of 5 years after installation. Researches are going
on to reduce the size of solar panel and to improve the
conversion efficiency which will reduce the cost of
installation

The above figure shows that 55-60% of the

total power used in mobile industry is consumed by
base station antenna alone. This figure also indicates
that this segment is responsible for nearly 80% of entire 7. REFERENCES
Carbon emitted by mobile industry.
[1] Radiaton city –current affairs- tehelka magazine
vol 7 issue 22 July 2010
5. COST EFFECTIVENES [2] Network extension to remote area – case study
by AEMO 2009
The installation cost of a 25kVA diesel [3] National green house accounts {NGA}factors
generator and its accessories is around 7lakh rupees, June 2009
but the running cost is found to be very very high. [4] Ericssion Review No2, 2009- Emission from
Suppose a generator is running for 8 hours a day and if mobile communication – Peter Hijorth & Nina
it consumes 9 liters of diesel per hour [6], at the lovehagin
current market rate of diesel the operator need [5] REPP Research report No 12 ,winter 2007
approximately Rs 2520/, per day and for a year it [6] Emission cut- Realities – Electricity generation –
works out to be nearly 9 lakh rupees. If we assume the peter long University of Austalia press march
life of diesel generator is 25 years, the running cost is 2010
found to be 2.25 crores per tower. In India there are