Nokia Siemens Networks, a provider of telecommunications equipment and solutions, announced E-Plus, a leading mobile service provider in Germany, is building a base station without using any German grid electricity.
With this development, the mobile service provider becomes the first to operate an off-grid base station in Germany. The site relies on a combination of solar and wind power, supported by fuel cell and deep cycle battery technology.
The green base station site is developed by Nokia Siemens (News 
- Alert) Networks’ end-to-end Energy Solutions business. Nokia Siemens Networks provides remote energy management functionalities that enable the monitoring of all green energy components at anytime. This environment-friendly operation of the site allows E-Plus to reduce its carbon footprint.
Nokia (News - Alert) Siemens Networks has provided a solar tracking system to increase solar energy production for the site operation. The company also offers Green Energy Controller to manage the solar energy, a wind turbine, a fuel cell system and the deep cycle battery technology.
Additionally, Nokia Siemens Networks (News - Alert) provides its network management platform, NetAct, for network monitoring and optimization to enable energy management of this site. With this platform, E-Plus can maintain and install new software remotely, which obviates the necessity of visiting base station sites.
Company officials say that the green site operation and remote energy management help E-Plus achieve zero CO2 emissions during the operation. The company hopes to increase energy efficiency by five percent by the year 2012, and by 20 percent by the year 2020.
“With this innovative energy concept, we show how mobile phone transmission sites can become carbon neutral,” said Rafal Markiewicz, chief technology officer of E-Plus Group, in a statement.
“This new transmission plant is part of our sustainability strategy,” Markiewicz added. “For us, building the first green base station site of this type is an important achievement and underlines our claim to operate the most efficient network in Germany.”
Electricity grid independent base station can be used at locations lacking an affordable energy grid connection to cover ‘white spot’ areas and increase the broadband penetration, according to company officials.
“E-Plus’ commitment to the environment is closely aligned with our own, and it’s great to see that the operator will achieve energy efficiency and zero CO2 emission during this site’s operation,” said Stefan Ilchmann, responsible for E-Plus business at Nokia Siemens Networks.
Recently Nokia Siemens Networks
announced the launch of Liquid Radio, a new architecture for mobile networks, which has the capability to direct mobile broadband capacity to where it is needed most.
Rajani Baburajan is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Rajani's articles, please visit her columnist page.Edited by
Jennifer Russell
