Cellphone tower operators across Africa are increasingly turning to solar power to reduce reliance on costly diesel fuel and expand connectivity in off-grid areas.
Solar used to have a very high upfront cost and a very long ROI time, but for use cases such as this, where the power draw is predictable and relatively low, solar is a no-brainer nowadays, with the price of both the panels and the batteries being so much lower than it used to be.
Only thing in solar that worries me is the reliability. It almost always needs some auxialary power to reliable smooth the lows and ups.
That said Afrika as a continent is pretty reliable for solar power all year around. Average is something like 325 days of bright sunlight annually. Cell network is pretty critical system tough, so as long as there is some fallback plan in case of failure i think this is excelent use for solar.
Solar used to have a very high upfront cost and a very long ROI time, but for use cases such as this, where the power draw is predictable and relatively low, solar is a no-brainer nowadays, with the price of both the panels and the batteries being so much lower than it used to be.
Only thing in solar that worries me is the reliability. It almost always needs some auxialary power to reliable smooth the lows and ups.
That said Afrika as a continent is pretty reliable for solar power all year around. Average is something like 325 days of bright sunlight annually. Cell network is pretty critical system tough, so as long as there is some fallback plan in case of failure i think this is excelent use for solar.