Apollo Solar: How to take the operational and financial risk out of solar power

Solar power is no longer a high risk gamble on unproven, capitally intensive solutions with uncertain economics. Operational risks have been minimised by the demonstration of the efficiency, reliability and scalability of Apollo’s solutions at 600 cell sites across Africa. Close partnerships between Apollo Solar and key EPC contractors such as Camusat and AKD Solar ensure a trained field workforce is in place to install and support sites. And now financial risks are minimised too through Apollo’s trade finance partners. TowerXchange spoke to Apollo Solar CEO John Pfeifer to learn more…

TowerXchange: Please introduce your company – where do you fit in the telecoms infrastructure ecosystem?

Apollo Solar is in the risk minimisation business for remote energy systems. We have proven that our Pure Solar systems eliminate or greatly reduce the risks and unknown costs associated with the diesel generators including their maintenance, the delivery of fuel and risk of theft. Furthermore, we have removed the risks of converting to Pure Solar or to our Solar/DG Hybrid systems with reliable, field-proven equipment.

We are now taking the next step by minimising the financial risks for our customers. By providing financing or leasing options for qualified customers, Apollo Solar is making it easy for the forward thinking tower company or MNO to reduce their ongoing opex without the large capital expenses often associated with solar installations.

TowerXchange: The first question our readers will want to know is ‘how proven is the solution in the field’ – please tell us about the performance of your solution in the field – who is using it and what results have been achieved?

Apollo Solar now has about 600 systems running in Africa. The performance has been essentially perfect since there has been no down time at any of them. It is important to note that most of the Apollo Systems are Pure Solar without any generators. This is a bold statement since these systems have no generator for backup and therefore must be 100% reliable. Our systems were specified because of the reliability of our core charge controllers which have a ten year history and many thousands of units installed around the world.

The end users are Orange and a number of the MNOs which are partners with Orange, plus several tower companies and other MNOs. The installations and ongoing O&M is provided by Camusat. Orange and Camusat are continuing to specify and purchase the Apollo equipment.

TowerXchange: How are Apollo Solar’s solutions installed and supported on the ground in Africa?

Apollo Solar sells primarily to EPC companies who have teams in place for installation, operation and maintenance. Having the best team on the ground is critical for the class of service we provide, so Apollo considers our relationship with our EPC partner extremely important. We provide complete training and ongoing technical support to the EPC so they can provide the very important Operation and Maintenance over the long term.

When a tower company or MNO comes to us directly, Apollo will bring in the EPC partner with the best proven track record. We certainly recommend our partner, Camusat in the countries where they have a presence. In Nigeria, we recently partnered with AKD Solar, a subsidiary of Plant Engineering of Nigeria. They bring a depth of experience successfully servicing the demanding oil and gas industry with integrity and high standards.

TowerXchange: What size of solar array is necessary for solar to start to become an economically viable option?

The short answer is that a hybrid site with just 6.8kW or 21 PV panels at 325 watts each will break even in 15 months against a typical diesel only site with 1.8kW of DC load. This PV array needs about 40 square meters for mounting which is available even on a small 12meter by 12meter site. Of course there are many factors which change the calculation. Apollo Solar will be pleased to calculate the price and the total cost of ownership for any potential site. Just tell us the load size, the location and your current cost of diesel fuel delivered to your sites.

TowerXchange: What magnitude of fuel and O&M savings can be realised using your solutions, and how does TCO compare with traditional diesel-oriented energy solutions over an eighteen month, three year and five year scenario?

Apollo Solar uses a sophisticated simulation programme which produces charts with the answers to all of those questions. See figure one.

Figure one shows the total cost of ownership on a 1.8kW load site going out five years for the energy systems using Diesel Generator only, DG plus deep cycle battery, a Hybrid with 6.8kW of PV and a DG and finally a Pure Solar system using 12.6kW of PV and no DG.

One can see that our Hybrid DG & PV system will pay for itself after only 15 months (where the orange line crosses the brown line). The Pure Solar version (yellow line) becomes less expensive than the Diesel-Only site in about 22 months. The deep cycle battery addition to the DG takes about 34 months to break-even against the diesel only generator and it is not very cost effective over time. At the end of five years, the DG only sites will have cost US$270,000. The TCO of the Hybrid DG plus a small PV array will be US$130,000 and the Pure Solar site will be US$120,000 and will remain the lowest cost going forward.

TowerXchange: What is your capacity to offer financing for the leasing of power systems?

Apollo Solar is working with American Trade and Finance Company and their guarantor, the US Export-Import Bank. The amount of capital available to purchase our systems is limited only by the credit worthiness of our customers. It is possible for the Apollo Solar team, working with a local bank to provide financing for 100% of the total equipment cost, plus the costs of site preparation and installation such that the tower company or MNO can simply make a lease payment.

TowerXchange: SLAs often demand 99.5% or higher uptime – tell us about the reliability and autonomy of your solution.

Our Pure Solar sites have batteries large enough for three to five days of autonomy and harvest enough solar energy each day such that the batteries are discharged less than 20%. The end result is uptime of essentially 100% for every site.  Since we knew the strict terms of SLAs before hand, our systems were designed with inherent redundancy, eliminating the risk of single point failures in the critical power train. Our systems include our own integrated remote monitoring which warns of any component issues back at the NOC. Our O&M partner has days of early warning to schedule crews to bring the system back up to full capacity during regular maintenance visits without the risk that the batteries will approach a dangerous level of discharge.

TowerXchange: How is your solution scalable to accommodate the increasing power requirements as multiple tenants are added to a site?

Apollo Solar understood that adding tenants is an essential part of the tower company business model, so we designed our systems to be modular for easy upgrades. We reasoned that installing an oversized system just in case additional energy might be required did not make sense, so we kept the basic system small and scaleable. The PV arrays and batteries can be increased in logical sized sections. Our cabinets do not put a limit on the capacity of the batteries as several competitors do. Our battery cabinets are separate from the electronics cabinet for easier installations and simple modular upgrades.

TowerXchange: Please sum up how you would differentiate your solution from your competitors’?

Apollo Solar counts our strong points as follows:

- Our great track record for reliability at challenging sites in Africa.

- We have 10 years of experience building solar energy harvest systems.

- Our MPPT Charge Controller is 98% to 99% efficient.  Some competitors are proud of their 96% efficient versions.

- We design and manufacture all our hardware and software in the USA.

We have found that in Africa, it does not matter what you can do, or even what you say you will do, but rather what you have actually done. Apollo Solar has 600 solar powered sites working reliably every day. The operating cost of these energy systems is close to zero since they have no diesel generators. Our customers are happy with our energy systems and continue to purchase more of them.