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- Connection with nature: the Internet on the roads will be powered by solar panels and wind turbines
Connection with nature: the Internet on the roads will be powered by solar panels and wind turbines
Roads in the Russian Federation will be covered with the Internet using solar panels and wind turbines. It is currently impossible to do this due to the lack of power grid infrastructure in some places. The use of renewable energy sources is planned to be consolidated in the Communications industry Development Strategy, according to the materials of the Ministry of Finance. These plans are realistic, experts say. Renewable energy sources are already widely used to power base stations in China, the USA, India and other countries.
Why do signalmen need wind turbines and solar panels
Telecommunications equipment in areas with underdeveloped infrastructure is planned to be supplied with electricity from autonomous renewable energy sources (RES). This follows from the materials of the Ministry of Finance: such a provision is planned to be included in the Development Strategy of the communications industry until 2035. With the help of such sources, in particular, it is planned to provide coverage of highways and railways, where there is currently no mobile Internet, and sometimes no connection at all.
"In world practice, as a rule, hybrid complexes consisting of photovoltaic modules, wind power plants, diesel-electric power plants and batteries controlled by controllers are used for power supply, for example, cellular base stations. The leaders in the development and application of autonomous renewable energy sources are China, the United States, India, Brazil and Germany," the document says.
Mobile Internet disruptions are regularly encountered by those who travel along highways or railways. Officials and communications specialists have repeatedly explained this by the lack of an electric grid infrastructure there. In particular, coverage of 99.9% of federal highways was one of the conditions for issuing LTE frequencies to the Big Four cellular operators in 2011 and extending these permits in 2021.
However, as the interdepartmental working group under the Ministry of Finance, established in 2023, found out, the infrastructure necessary for the construction of LTE networks in the most sparsely populated and extended regions is only on certain sections of highways. In the spring of this year, the State Radio Frequency Commission excluded 1566 road sections from the obligations of the Big Four cellular players for LTE coverage - experts estimated their length at about 12 thousand km.
The lack of electrical networks is a major obstacle to the development of cellular networks in Russia, said Leonid Konik, a partner at ComNews Research. There is no electricity on hundreds of kilometers of federal highways, which makes it difficult to light them and connect cellular base stations, he said.
In 2022, the Accounting Chamber of the Russian Federation reported that even on toll roads operated by Avtodor Group, only 64% of their length was illuminated, Leonid Konik recalled.
The Ministry of Finance confirmed to Izvestia that, as part of fulfilling the instructions of Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, the agency has prepared and sent for approval to the ministries concerned a draft report that contains key areas for updating the Strategy for the development of the communications industry of the Russian Federation. They were formulated based on the results of consideration of proposals from interested departments and ANO "Digital Economy" on the site of SIC "Telecom" with the involvement of the expert community.
— One of the directions is to solve the issue of ensuring uninterrupted power supply to communication facilities. In particular, it is discussed that in territories where there is no possibility of connecting telecom equipment to power transmission lines, regions can provide it with both renewable and non-renewable energy sources. This will contribute to the expansion of mobile network coverage," the Ministry of Finance said.
At the same time, the draft report notes that work is currently continuing with the industry and interested departments to update the strategy, including discussing a number of other proposals, the ministry added. The final version of the report on the implementation of the instructions is not yet available, they clarified.
MTS told Izvestia that as part of its own energy efficiency program and carbon footprint reduction strategy, the company is already using energy-saving equipment and alternative energy sources. The company operates base stations using renewable and autonomous energy sources in hard-to-reach and energy-deficient regions, they told Izvestia.
"For a number of remote base stations, the company uses combined autonomous power supply systems, complementing diesel generator sets with solar stations, as well as fully autonomous systems based on solar energy and storage devices," MTS said.
For example, in the Primorsky and Krasnodar Territories, there are base stations powered by photo panels. Sites using combined systems such as diesel generators and solar panels are operating in the Primorsky and Krasnodar Territories, Bashkiria and the Astrakhan Region, MTS said.
— Solar panels and other renewable energy sources are an expensive and difficult solution, as operators consume large amounts of electricity. But this does not negate the need for research on this topic, since renewable energy generation is becoming cheaper as it spreads," the T2 press service noted.
Signalmen themselves solve the problem of the lack of power supply along roads and in other territories, Leonid Konik said.
"For example, Rostelecom is installing autonomous communication hubs in the Far East: each of them is a telecommunications container with solar modules and a diesel generator, as well as a 22—meter mast to accommodate base stations," the expert noted.
Which renewable energy sources are most suitable for operators
For operators, autonomous renewable sources are a way to build communications where it is economically pointless to pull a power line, but there is a demand for coverage. For subscribers, this is primarily a chance to get stable mobile Internet on highways and in remote settlements, where today there is no connection or it is extremely unstable, said Dmitry Vysokogorsky, NTI expert on promising and new energy sources. Elements of such solutions are already being used by operators on a point‑by-point basis, and global experience shows that hybrid renewable energy complexes work well precisely at base stations of the "last mile" away from the main infrastructure, he pointed out.
"Autonomous hybrid solar panel power plants with batteries and a backup diesel generator allow operators to provide communications where mains power supply is economically unjustified, primarily along highways, railways and in sparsely populated areas," said Sofya Komissarova, senior analyst at the Center for Strategic Support of Domestic Technologies.
According to her, for the subscriber, this is primarily the absence of coverage gaps on long-distance routes, where previously communication was lost for tens of kilometers, and the ability to make calls or use navigation on the road, regardless of the distance of the site. In remote settlements, the sustainable power supply of base stations means access to the mobile Internet: from emergency calls to government and banking services.
— Operators are already using such solutions, but in a targeted manner, and consolidating them in a strategy can translate disparate experience into a systemic one and expand the area of reliable communication. The effectiveness of such installations is determined by the climate and the calculation of reserve capacity, so it is realistic to talk about hybrid configurations," said Sofya Komissarova.
Renewable energy sources in combination with automated diesel generators are already being used in Russia to supply electricity to remote cell towers and base stations. For example, on Sakhalin, near the village of Ogonki, there is such a cellular communication tower, which is powered almost all year round by two sections of solar panels and two low-power wind turbines, said Igor Chausov, director of the analytical department of the NGO Center for Energy Systems of the Future Energynet. Only during the winter months, when the solar panels are covered with snow, does the diesel generator turn on.
— Automated hybrid power complexes of small capacity — we call them intelligent distributed micro-power systems — are a much more efficient solution than laying networks to cell towers if these towers are located far from power centers. We can talk about a multiple reduction in the cost of the solution — from two to 10 times, depending on the specific territory. At the same time, hybrid complexes produce a kilowatt-hour one and a half to two times cheaper than diesel generators without hybridization with renewable energy sources, he believes.
Abroad, the use of hybrid sources combining renewable energy, fuel generation (diesel or natural gas on LNG) is widely used, not only in the EU, the USA and China, but also, for example, in Malaysia, he added.
The ideas of green energy — solar and wind — look attractive. But no one can guarantee that the wind will blow at a certain point, and even more so, given Russia's northern location, the sun will shine, Leonid Konik noted. Therefore, each renewable energy facility must contain a diesel generator - it must be refueled and serviced periodically, he said. There are already intelligent power supply systems in which diesel is used to charge batteries and turns on exclusively at the time when the battery needs to be recharged. But diesel is hardly a green and renewable energy source, the expert concluded.
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