Innovation@Work

Salam & Hello!

I hope you all are in high spirits.

As the effects of environmental degradation and pollution are becoming more evident than ever, the case for renewables has got more economic sense than ever. The havoc wrecked by the floods that started in late July of this year is now classified as the history’s most major disaster.  With over 1400 causalities and more than US $ 14 billion worth economic damages, Pakistan has to go a long way to recover from the affects of the disaster.

In the aftermaths of such disasters, the best things to do is to start recovery at the earliest. The first in line is disaster-emergency response and infrastructure restoration, this is a pre-requisite for rebuilding lives and livelihoods. Telecommunications which now forms an integral part of our lives is the key to a swift emergency response and rebuilding.

In a pro-active set-up, emergency Telecom infra-structure based on Wireless networks like TERRESTRIAL TRUNKED RADIOS (TETRA) forms the basic element of communication in a natural disaster, such as that of Kashmir Earthquake and the floods in recent times. Unfortunately Pakistan has not got an advanced emergency-response dedicated Telecom infra-structure. Our basic telephony services are relied upon in such emergencies, such as fixed telephones, wireless phones and cellular operators’ infra-structure. Such networks are bound to fail in such a clamity of massive proportions. When you got no logistics, no utility power and BTSs being flooded, its a nightmare!

What is required is an advanced, digital, disaster-proof wireless infra-structure like TETRA with a centralised or de-centralised (depending upon the calamities’ scale) command and control setup. This shall not only save lives but would be a base for rebuilding efforts. Such a system would also have Renewable Power as an essential element because as we have seen it is either not possible to power such stations through conventional means, in a disaster such as the recent floods we have witnessed power-outages on a massive scale.

ABOUT TETRA:

he common mode of operation for them is in a group calling mode in which a single button push will connect the user to the users in a selected callgroup and/or a dispatcher. It is also possible for the terminal to act as a one-to-one walkie talkie but without the normal range limitation since the call still uses the network. If enabled by the Subscriber Management TETRA terminals can act as mobile phones (cell phones), with a full-duplex direct connection to other TETRA Users or the PSTN. Emergency buttons, provided on the terminals, enable the users to transmit emergency signals, to the dispatcher, overriding any other activity taking place at the same time.

TETRA uses Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) with four user channels on one radio carrier and 25 kHz spacing between carriers. Both point-to-point and point-to-multipoint transfer can be used. Digital data transmission is also included in the standard though at a low data rate.

TETRA Mobile Stations (MS) can communicate Direct Mode or using Trunked infrastructure (Switching and Management Infrastructure or SwMI) made of TETRA Base Stations (TBS). As well as allowing direct communications in situations where network coverage is not available, Direct Mode or DMO also includes the possibility of using one (or a chain) of TETRA terminals as relays for a signal. This functionality is called DMO gateway (from DMO to TMO) or DMO Repeater (DMO to DMO). In Emergency situations this feature allows direct communications underground or in areas of bad coverage.

In addition to voice and dispatch services, the TETRA system supports several types of data communication. Status messages and Short Data Services (SDS) are provided over the system’s main control channel, while Packet Data or Circuit switched data communication uses specifically assigned traffic channels.

TETRA provides Authentication Mechanisms of Terminals towards Infrastructure and vice versa. For protection against eavesdropping, air interface encryption and end-to-end encryption is available.

Salam & Hello!

I hope you are fine! wherever you are.

This is my first blog, of the new year 2010.
The new year has dawned with renewed sense of doing something about our energy crisis,saving energy, as we have witnessed resumption of electricity & gas load-shedding.

Once again our Energy reservoirs have come under spotlight. We have also witnessed criticism of government over the issue, over the load shedding & over the rental power projects. We need to think & act at our own level, both industry-wise & both at our city/town,province level, first. If we wait for our government to act first, we may miss the train.

Well! continuing from where we left the last time:

Depending upon the load-size, the time of backup (usually multiple of days) & the depth of the pocket of the investor, the Renewable portion can increase or decrease to find a best-effort value in a Hybrid-RE system. In Hybrid-RE system we use a Petrol/Diesel Generator,in addition to PV & Wind-generators. off course the solution as discussed earlier has to take into account the initial survey(s) and the met. office data. for a particular location.

The first thing is to know your equipment load accurately.
The battery backup size or broadly speaking the backup time depends upon
your requirements i.e. design requirements .

The challenge is for the designer & investor to agree on a “best-effort” or optimised-value. This is the most important part & the most difficult part. The others are: know thy weather,location accurately,calculate & estimate the logistics accurately and the last part is the deployment phase.

I hope you have enjoyed it so far….

In the next blog, I shall try to build on the “best-effort” value and important things to consider.

Until then have nice time & fun at your job or whatever you are doing

I hope you are in high spirits & not bogged down by current events in the country.

In the last blog we discussed Wind Energy generation, here we shall discuss how to optimise & efficiently use the resources i.e. PV, wind, money & size.

The basic key of an optimised Renewable Energy (RE) solution is to survey the site(s) properly and all the relevant data before hand. That may be data of building-congestion in urbanized areas and other geographical data relevant to each RE resource like heights of particular locations, Sun-hours, rainfall yearly average, wind velocities record for a particular geographical location etc. etc.

The other important aspect is installation of good solar-trackers and in case of Wind accurate data collection on site of wind-velocity, pressure & direction at a particular ‘wind-farm’ or a site(s). Using solar trackers not only increase the efficiency of PVs but it also reduces the sizing of PVs, backup batteries & the whole system with the logistics also reduced. Off course the PVs being the most expensive item.

There are also ways to optimise the RE systems. The smarter the controllers the greater the efficiency and lesser the costs.

In the next edition we shall focus on other optimised solutions. Hopefully by then, things shall improve security-wise.

….Continued from my previous Blog, where we talked about overcoming the issues of Sun-hours for solar-panels and reducing the sizing of the PV system.

The way we are not utilising our resources, we are not far from a period when our nation shall face an even graver energy crises, which shall make our country heavily in debts due to fossil-fuels imports, now totaling a whopping US $ 7.5 billion, annually.

Now back on to our discussion:

Wind is a resource that has been used for centuries to propel ships in deep oceans for trans-continental journeys since times immemorial.Its been used since ancient times to mill corn and grains to make flour. The Windmills of Holland come to remind us, this.

Wind generators essentially generate electricity by using a gears’ mechanism to ultimately drive a Genny, which produces DC output. Batteries are used to store the charge, followed by an inverter for conversion to AC.

Depending upon the terrain/blockages, seasonal weather an area has a characteristic profile to offer winds of considerable magnitude for electricity generation. This may be non-uniform yearly. Hence to overcome these issues a suitably-sized (size & watts-output) wind Genny is chosen in combination with PV system.This is called a HYBRID Renewable Energy (RE) system.

Thus now we have two birds in hand:
UNO: the limited sun-hours problem is overcome ;
TWO: the ultimate challenge of reducing the overall cost is also met.

Successful people think analytically and importantly they think aloud, so please think about how the costs
are reduced this way and give the reason in your comments here

Still the costs can even,be further reduced, but how?

In the next edition, I shall talk about efficiency issues in Renewable Energy (RE) and how these tend
to making RE-implementation a challenge. The aim off course is,keeping our Carbon-footprint down in a sustainable and achievable fashion.

This is continuation of my previous blog. In the last few days I’ve come to know Zumbeel more. I think we have a complete portal for young enthusiastic people who are positive-minded and have a passion and the required energy to succeed through sharing knowledge.

Now back to our discussion!

My first post was just creating a small ripple in the lake, so that young people do not get bored by too many Watts/Amps-talk.

Just the other day I was commenting on BTS power solutions in the Zumbeel’s forums sections.There an official of a leading vendor is quoted to have said that solar is best for equatorial regions. I’d like to explain it in trailing section.Lets talk about solar, wind & other renewable energy options for telecom in small but important bits & pieces.

Solar or Photo-voltiacs (PV) has become synonymous with renewable energy to us. However we need to understand PV-systems indepth to make real progress and have value of our bucks. Every region of the world has an average daily ’sun hours’ value.  In our country it is 6-8 hours a day. In equatorial regions within 15-degrees its even more. When the sun has set, batteries are used for powering a load/telecom site.

The constraints here are: limited sun-hours to charge batteries plus drive the load, , low PV-efficiency of only 13-15 percent.

As the sun sets batteries drive the load/BTS, so you need a proportionately bigger battery-bank to counter this issue.More importantly you need to increase the capacity of your PVs, so more Amps canbe put into the batteries as well as powering the load.

The efficiency means the percent of energy which is converted to electricity out of the total energy received by the PV from the sun. We now have better quality of PVs with even higher efficiency such as Nanosolar, however that is a few years down the line commercially, as orders for Nanosolar PVs are booked 3-5 years in advance.

The sun-hour is actually the hours that the sun facing the PV (without shadows etc) can produce electricity of measurable proportions.

However the above factors make the size of the PVs much much more than anyone is ready to go for.

So how to meet the challenges of going green while still making considerable and sustainable development and saving bucks of reducing OPEX costs. In energy generation/finance this is termed as break-even point or payback period.

You please try thinking about this.

In the next installment, I’ll answer these questions.

……………..to be continued

Just last weekend the world celebrated the “World Environment Day”. Pakistan is also one country affected by the global warming; we’re already seeing increased sliding and glaciers sweeping populations in Chitral and North in the past few years.

The case for reducing our carbon-footprint is made even stronger as Pakistan’s energy crises in recent years. Our energy comes mostly from fossil fuels, which emit a lot of polluting emissions and most importantly oil-imports amount to a whopping $ 7 Billion dollars annually. Studies & estimates suggest that Pakistan can produce enough energy from renewable resources; even only wind can furnish all its energy requirements up to 2030.

In the current energy crises & recession, as companies find new and innovative ways of reducing the operational costs, one element that we cannot and should not overlook in telecom sector (being a part of it) is renewable energy. By employing Renewables into telecom the operational costs of telecom infrastructure over a period of time can be effectively reduced by as much as 15-40 percent, depending on environmental conditions and the extent of Renewables’ employed for powering-up a telecom site.

From my experience in telecom, major blackout or outages relating to telecom services are power-related, especially in hard to reach remote locations. Ideally, if you have power & its backup (e.g. batteries) resources available all the time (like Renewables) the maintenance visits & related logistics can be reduced to an extent where operators shall only be required to have level-3 type maintenance.