Heliocentris: Managed Power Services

Like TowerXchange, Heliocentris is keenly aware of the paradigm shift as operators outsource or sell passive assets to independent towercos, and the implications for the way services are bundled and delivered to emerging market tower operators. Energy opex, carbon emissions and O&M priorities are shifting, transforming telecoms infrastructure supply chains and service business models. In this interview, Heliocentris’ CEO Ayad Abul-Ella proposes a new ‘Managed Power Services’ business model and discusses the future potential of ‘fuel logistics free solution’.

TowerXchange: Please introduce Heliocentris and explain what role you play in the telecoms infrastructure ecosystem?

Heliocentris develops, delivers and, where meaningful, installs and operates energy efficiency and complete power solutions for telco base stations. Enabled by our site and energy management system, we provide a full set of services and solutions. Our Services reach from energy optimisation and solution engineering to implementation and smart operations. Our power solutions are based on best in class power components from third parties as well as inhouse developed battery and fuel cell systems. Depending on the customer preference we offer our site and energy management system on a license basis operated by us or turnkey to our customers.

Our initial market focus is the Middle East, North and Sub-Saharan Africa. We also have a foothold in Southeast Asia, and our Asia-Pacific activities are growing out of that base.

Our target customers are whoever has the pain and gain from the power bill and the operations of a cell site! Hence our direct customers are sometimes managed service providers, often the Mobile Network Operators themselves, and growing every day, independent towercos.

TowerXchange: Looking at your website, I can see a broad range of capabilities from Energy Management Systems and RMS to solar, wind and fuel cell energy solutions and supporting services - do you develop and manufacture all these different solutions yourselves, or select and integrate best of breed COTS solutions?

We have three areas of competence that we focus on inhouse: Power Management with corresponding smart operations services, hydrogen technologies for fuel logistics free solutions, and power solutions design and systems integration. We feel that our rollout and service operations teams in the field provide a unique additional benefit to our customers.

Our EMS is proprietary, and one of our key differentiators is that we develop both the server software and all the sensors on the sites. To optimise cost, performance and our ability to fit solutions to client needs, our EMS is delivered on a modular basis.

On top of our EMS we can add a layer of solution engineering and system integration, enabling us to take best-in-class, vendor-open components to create the best power solution to tailored to each site’s unique topology.

Our hydrogen technologies include our own fuel cells and electrolyser systems as we feel that such systems are not commoditised and can provide us with an opportunity to develop sustainable competitive advantage. Hence together with our partners FutureE and Acta we develop our own solutions in this field.

TowerXchange: Let’s talk about your Fuel Cell technologies. Does switching from GenSet to Fuel Cells really simplify the energy logistics supply chain?

Let me be frank; I’d agree with the critical voices that are concerned that replacing a diesel supply chain with a hydrogen or methanol supply chain doesn’t reduce complexity as needed. Methane logistics may be less complicated and theft exposed compared to diesel logistics, but looking at the cost of every site visit to remote base stations, the target can and should be power solutions that are fuel logistics free.

The current use cases of fuel cells are mainly for UPS at grid-connected sites.

Heliocentris together with their partners is working on something quite different to many other fuel cell companies, based on an exclusive electrolyser technology that has the potential to enable fuel cells to offer a fuel logistics free solution. We’ll reach a critical mass of installed hydrogen-based systems only when we have both, commercially viable fuel cell systems AND commercially viable on site hydrogen generation.

So no, we don’t believe in carrying hydrogen bottles instead of diesel for prime power supply at off-grid and bad-grid sites.

TowerXchange: How would this fuel logistics free solution work in practice?

A fuel logistics-free solution needs to generate and store 100% of the required power at the site. This can be mainly achieved by PV-Battery Hybrid or by Fuel Cell Systems with on site hydrogen generation.

From a truly commercial perspective there are a very limited number of sites where such an approach is currently viable. At most sites, the amount of PV and battery cells needed ultimately lose in comparison to the cost of diesel gensets. Our system stores energy in the form of hydrogen, generated from water onsite using excess power from PV and whatever unreliable grid power may be available. You can then burn hydrogen when solar, wind or grid power is not available.

We expect fuel cell powered, fuel logistics free solutions to achieve commercial parity in the next 24 months. If the technology can be evolved to a point when performance, lifetime and cost get where they need to be, fuel logistics free solutions will deliver a paradigm shift, enabling tower operators to get rid of energy logistics altogether, rather than replacing one fuel logistics supply chain with another.

TowerXchange: Our readers always want to know how proven innovative solutions such as this are in the field, so is your fuel logistics free solution actually being trialed yet?

During the last twelve months our technology partner Acta moved such solutions from laboratory status to being engaged in more than a handful of field trials. We in parallel have deployed demonstration and lab systems with several research institutes and industrial partners. Our initial results indicate a sweet spot for commercial viability to be where sites are grid-connected, yet the grid in average is available less than 12-14 hours.

However, I don’t want to over-emphasise our fuel cell technologies, exciting though they are. Heliocentris is rolling out energy efficiency and complete power solutions for telcos and towercos, of which today most don’t include fuel cells - our objective is to position Heliocentris as a Managed Power Service and Solution provider, incorporating all kinds of technologies always striving to achieve what truly counts: maximum uptime at lowest TCO with the least possible carbon emissions. To us this is not a magic triangle of trade-offs, but rather one of more and more complementarity if approached the right way.

TowerXchange: The majority of hybridisation in emerging markets has used solar rather than wind generation or fuel cell energy storage sources - how do you foresee demand for different renewable energy generation and storage solutions changing as cell sites and energy technologies evolve?

In emerging markets, most of the opex is consumed by diesel genset based power solutions so far. The shift to networked hybrid solutions is obviously taking place as we speak and we are without doubt that this trend will accelerate more and more. While this shift takes pace, we believe that different solutions will continue to co-exist for at least some time to come. As the benefits of different battery and renewable technologies in combination with or without GenSets vary a lot across the different sites.  So having a strong solution design methodology that allows for modular and scalable power solutions in combination with highly customisable Energy Management Systems will foster the rising demand for renewable energies and allow the opex bills to be reduced to new levels.

The “one-size-fits-all” approach that we see often promoted these days is likely to leave significant efficiencies on the table. Depending on specific load and geographical characteristics of a site, different power solutions may be the best at each individual site. So the task will be to have toolboxes that allow the CTOs to choose from a variety of solution designs while allowing for cost reductions from increasing volumes. This is what we believe smart toolboxes should live-up to.

Solar is already being widely deployed at sites, most having 6-12kW peak of PV installed, and I forsee a couple of thousand small wind turbines with a 4-5kW peak to be deployed in certain regions soon as well. Lead-acid batteries, OPZV or AGM as well as more and more Li-Ion batteries all have a role to play - as lowest TCO’s for different site characteristics are yet not met predominantly by one or the other.

There doesn’t have to be a much of a trade off between site optimised power solutions and standardised designs. We rather like to see our approach as one that allows for ‘standardised configurability’

TowerXchange: How do you balance the benefits of customisation with the cost-savings of standardisation?

There doesn’t have to be a much of a trade off between site optimised power solutions and standardised designs. We rather like to see our approach as one that allows for ‘standardised configurability’.

First of all the towercos can pass on the complexity that arises from site optimsed power solutions to suppliers like Heliocentris that have specialised in designing, implementing and operating power solutions on a turnkey basis. Secondly, these solutions should allow for bundling on a component basis. For example a smart power solutions company can base their supply on a few type of battery cells from 2-3 suppliers, yet having modular battery cabinets that allow for dozens of different battery cabinets. And last but not least, thirdly with the right remote management and smart operations services the different technologies can be operated by the towercos in a very unified and transparent manner. We believe the combination of these three elements can resolve much of the trade-off between site optimised solutions and cost-savings from standardisation.

TowerXchange: What will it take for ESCO business models to be adopted in emerging market telecoms? When we speak to towercos, the most common reason they give for the lack of progress of ESCOs in Africa is that energy companies don’t have the field service capabilities to support a substantial number of sites.

I fully understand, and think the towercos have a valid concern about the field service capabilities of aspiring ESCOs. This is why we think that Managed Power Services supporting the tower operator in managing their power and overall passive infrastructure is a sensible at least first step.

Vendors who offer an ESCO proposition immediately might be overlooking challenges that arise from managing and maintaining all the different components ranging from rectifiers to gensets and AC’s and batteries out of one hand with all the SLA’s attached. The intelligence and experience in the NOC’s have been gained over decades meanwhile. Moving to Hybrid Power Solutions that are off the balance sheet and operated by the suppliers is already a big step from where we are today. So taking it a step further and simply paying for energy per the kWh consumed might be premature. Also the field support resources need to be adequately available and trained.

Heliocentris has build up strong local teams especially in the Middle East. Together with one of our reference customers that meanwhile has more than 400 sites equipped with our systems, we see how important power management services are to capture the full benefits that hybrid power solutions and remote monitoring systems offer. This is why we see more and more customers looking for power management services that look at the passive infrastructure end-to-end and ensure every day the maximum savings and uptime independent from who supplied the rectifier, the genset, the hybrid system or the AC’s.

For example for a remote managed hybrid power solution the uptime should on average stay above the 99.5% level while genset runtimes stay below 10 hours. In order to continuously reach such KPIs the SLAs with the different suppliers are one thing, but to have the monitoring and analytics at hand to create the tickets and coordinate the maintenance teams in the needed manner is another.

Our business model could evolve into an ESCO, but the Managed Power Service approach may be also durable in itself. One way or the other, I do think that simple capex plus standard after sale services is a model we will see less and lesser.

TowerXchange: Finally, please sum up how you would differentiate Heliocentris from your competitors.

In these dynamic and fast changing markets we differentiate ourselves based on our know-how, technology and services we offer to our customers.

There are two main drivers. Firstly, the combination of solution and system engineering; the right supply chain to deliver, install and operate customised turnkey solutions, and Managed Power Services that enable Smart operations. All this is realised with an excellent global partner network. We maximise uptime over the whole lifecycle of a site.

Secondly, our systems, know-how, focus and technology create flexible and appropriate asset preserving solutions. We enable the customer to reuse their equipment. This saves capex and improves TCO as the operator has smaller investments to achieve savings.

In summary, Heliocentris has two approaches: based on our EMS know-how we combine solution and system engineering with the installation and operation of turnkey hybrid power solutions and add managed power services to enable smart operations which is the key to a Power NOC. Secondly we provide highly flexible solutions that enable our customers to retrofit their installed base without the need to change existing equipment.

Our holistic approach creates unique value for our customers and that’s our differentiation.