Africa’s largest solar-powered cell site opened with rollouts in Nigeria to covering the country’s 900 telecommunication towers. IHS Africa, a telecommunications infrastructure provider with headquarters in Nigeria and operations across sub-Saharan Africa, has deployed the large, multi-operator installation without incurring a profit loss. Small, single operator solar sites are increasingly being deployed, given the absence of public power in many parts of Africa, but this is the first large multi-operator installation.
The site includes solar panels covering an area of 96 square miles that will produce a total of 12 kW (peak) and supply power to three mobile network operators with room for expansion in the future. The technology was developed in-house with IHS chief technology officer William Saad saying: “Through 10 years of field experience we have developed a broad range of techniques in diesel reduction and site-optimization. We are also pleased to see operators increasingly adopting the use of small, single-operator solar powered cell sites, alongside much larger installations, such as ours, to meet their power demands and reduce costs.”
He added, “Furthermore, this cell site forms part of our investment program to reduce diesel consumption by an average of 40 to 50% over the next two years for our 4,000 generator powered cellular communications towers in West Africa.”
IHS currently has 4,000 towers under management, owns 900 towers for collocation with each tower having guaranteed 99.9% uptime for electricity.
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