Hybrid powered BTSs towards green telecom

Abstract

The climate change is one of the most hotly debated and compelling topic of a globalconcern. The experts have estimated that the average temperature of our planet hasincreased by about 0.8 degree centigrade since 18801. This rise in temperature isattributed to the effects of global warming brought about by the accumulation ofgreenhouse gases (GHG) in the atmosphere.With major concern about the ill-effects over environment and also to reducedependence on fast depleting conventional sources of energy, like many other countriesaround the globe, India too has initiated taking steps to promote using renewable energytechnologies and the industry has been encouraged to look up and adopt RET sources.The Department of Telecom (DoT) of the Ministry of Communication and IT, Governmentof India had taken a pro-active step and issued directions in the year 2012 to all theTelecom Service Providers to undertake steps to mitigate carbon footprint by adoptingenergy efficient measures and progressively shifting to renewable energy sources in theirnetwork.The Telecom Service Providers have initiated taking steps like shifting from indoor BTSsto outdoor BTSs, usage of Free Cooling Units to minimize air conditioning requirement,installation of energy efficient hardware etc. However, there needs to be a lot of workdone by the Telecom Service Providers in the area of usage of renewable energy sourcesfor powering the core network especially the BTSs.In this paper, we will see what has been the response of the Telecom Service Providerstowards implementations of hybrid energy sources for the BTSs, what are the possibleissues towards implementation of the guidelines and what changes can be proposed inthe existing guidelines to make it easier for the stakeholders for a better collaborationfor achieving the expected results of cutting down the emissions and providing betterconnectivity in the remotest parts of the country without being overly dependent onavailability of grid power