Advanced Fuel Cell offer quick and simple solution to reduce cost and carbon footprint.

Telecommunications operators today face two major challenges – to reduce overall operating expenses and to deploy more environmentally technologies. Anil Trehan, Chief Technical Officer for Carrier Solutions at Andrew Solutions, explains how Advanced Fuel Cell Solutions can help operators reduce costs and benefit the environment at the same time.

Operating costs have always been a concern for operators with energy bills contributing to more than half of their operating expenditure and many have been exploring solar arrays, wind turbines and fuel cells as alternative energy solutions. These green solutions have high initial costs but offer long-term savings through lower operating and maintenance costs that enable operators to run a sustainable and profitable business. Moreover, their contributions towards the carbon footprint are significantly lower.

Advanced fuel cell (AFC) solutions are designed to overcome the current issues of high maintenance and operational costs of batteries and diesel generators used in backup power solutions.

Field trials conducted around the world in differing climate conditions and power grids of varied quality showed that AFC solutions offer extremely high levels of operational reliability and durability Some test sites faced numerous power outages each day requiring the fuel cell to provide power every day and in such situations, the fuel cells operated with 100 percent availability and provided the requisite power needed to keep the network fully operational. These test sites included ambient temperatures of up to 45 degrees Celcius.

A typical advanced fuel cell solution would comprise of two 8kW fuel cell modules housed in a 63”H x 45”W x 52”D cabinet, which is Telcordia GR-487 compliant. The cabinet contains all necessary power conditioning equipment required to provide regulated DC Voltage to match site requirements, typically at battery float voltage.  The system provides instantaneous power upon loss of AC or DC power utilizing either a small stack of batteries or ultra-capacitors as bridging power. The cabinet is capable of providing 4kW of power up to the total of 16kW in 4kW increments and scalability can be achieved through a series of field retrofit kits.

Hydrogen to the fuel cell cabinet is provided by hydrogen cylinders stored in a Hydrogen Storage Cabinet which has the capacity to store up to 16 standard cylinders.

The hydrogen cylinders are configured in two banks of eight with automatic switch-over from one bank another. The cabinet will usually include the pressure regulator, manifold, flexible hoses, check valves and safety relief valve. The storage unit can be placed next to the fuel cell cabinet or up to 300 feet away from it. Hydrogen pressure of each bank is continuously monitored and an automatic e-mail can be issued when it reaches a preset threshold to notify the hydrogen distributor that refuelling for the cylinders in the cabinet is required.

The advanced fuel cell solution also offered other intangible benefits to the operators who employed them on the test sites. On average, the carbon footprint space of networks that used advanced fuel cell solutions was reduced by a staggering 50 percent. Over the test period, maintenance costs and operational costs were reduced by 77 percent and 37 percent respectively, on average.

Anil Trehan will be one of the speakers at this year’s CommunicAsia 2010 and he will address the cost benefits of an advanced hydrogen fuel cell solution for providing backup power in wireless and wireline networks. He will share experiences from field trials by various operators across Asia Pacific.