“Power supply to telecom stations through FC technology”

Off-grid Radio Base Stations are currently powered by Diesel generators. Nevertheless an alternative can be possible improving three critical aspects of the problem: efficiency, costs and environmental impact. In order to address the problem Telecom adopted the choice to host a solution based on renewable energy sources and fuel cells. The solution chosen is named “FCpoweredRBS” meaning fuel cell powering radio base station, and has been developed by the European project FCH-JU, http://www.fcpoweredrbs.eu/, through a consortium composed by private entities: Dantherm, Green Hydrogen, MES besides research organizations: Tor Vergata University and JRC´s institute for Energy and Transport with Ericsson Italy as coordinator. The project uses fuel cell as an innovative technology able to work either with hydrogen either with methanol as fuel. The employment of FCpoweredRBS solution on Telecom sites aims at improving the site efficiency in terms of cost saving and environmental saving with a high reliability. The power supply of Telecom station through fuel cell solution demonstrates the advantage of a cells power generation solution substituting standard Diesel generators with a PEM fuel cell generator which can be fuelled by pure hydrogen (either locally produced and stored or transported) or by methanol.