Fuel Cells Promise To Reduce Carbon Emissions of Mobile Base Stations 25
Mickeycaskill writes: Vodafone says fuel cells could reduce the carbon emissions and noise pollution caused by mobile base stations in remote areas of developing economies. The company has 122 million mobile data customers in emerging markets and needs to expand its network in these countries to meet demand. However many base stations are in rural areas where grid power is unreliable and need on-site power generation. These are typically diesel powered, but Vodafone wants to move away from this type of power and says solar power is too expensive and not suitable for urban areas. It has already deployed 200 fuel cells in South Africa and wants to replicate the model elsewhere.
I'm confused... (Score:1, Insightful)
The article says the justification for fuel cells is because grid power isn't reliable in rural areas. Fine, that makes sense. But the justification for using solar is that it's not suitable for urban areas. I'm confused why the power grid isn't good enough in urban areas while using solar for base stations in rural areas. Am I missing something? Also, why not use wind energy and mount turbines on the towers in rural areas to provide additional power?
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The reason you're confused is because the justification is bullshit.
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The article says the justification for fuel cells is because grid power isn't reliable in rural areas. Fine, that makes sense. But the justification for using solar is that it's not suitable for urban areas. I'm confused why the power grid isn't good enough in urban areas while using solar for base stations in rural areas. Am I missing something? Also, why not use wind energy and mount turbines on the towers in rural areas to provide additional power?
I think they are mostly worried about cost of solar. There can be siting issues for ground station if there are a bunch of tall buildings around, but it is true that we don't see nearly as much solar in urban areas as we do rural/suburban areas. Wind is almost a non-starter in most urban areas. Buildings cause wind flow issues. In this use case, both would need batteries, which is the real cost killer.
Pianist_Photographer_Painter! (Score:1)
Long term damage of the planet is perhaps even bigger with "cell of any type" - primarily due to carcinogenic & lethal disposable parts that need to be stored in underground, lead shielded bunkers. Phosphoric Acid or H2SO4 are corrosive... they eat metals!
Go Solar. - a kickass way would be to do away with batteries completely & use solar to store capacitor based energy on a slow discharge.
Wind turbines kill Pigeons & Sparrows - see any large scale wind turbine project - what they dont tell you i
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actually bird kill by wind turbines is much lower than bird kill by crop spraying and other pesticide and farm machinery use.
And how do we make hydrogen? (Score:2)
The main commercial source of hydrogen at the moment is by catalysis from hydrocarbons, thereby pumping CO2 into the atmosphere. I don't think Vodafone has got the foggiest with this line of reasoning.
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95% of hydrogen is produced by steam reforming of fossil fuels, predominantly natural gas. CH4 + H2O -> CO + 3H2, with a second stage CO + H2O -> CO2 + H2. As you point out, you end up with vast amounts of CO2. To be fair, this stream of CO2 is conveniently concentrated for possible sequestration by pumping it into an underground reservoir; however it is more generally just released into the atmosphere.
In addition, the process involves steam at 1000 C, which requires massive energy input. Most often,
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What's the typical power consumption of a site? (Score:2)
10, 20, 30 kw? More?
It seems kind of hard to judge what the generation options are without knowing how much power an individual site uses.
These are why evs are going nowhere. (Score:1)
Fuel cells should be more widely available before long and fuel every bit as quickly as gasoline cars, which is precisely why evs are never going anywhere except perhaps niche applications and greentards.
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$5000 seems kind of in the low side for a low-volume production. The initial units were sure to cost a lot more. Also a fuel cell that works with complex hydrocarbons as a fuel is more expensive to manufacture because you need a fuel reformer. Even SOFC fuel cells can burn only simple hydrocarbons like CH4 but must be made of brittle ceramics and run at high temperatures.
I think you mean solar power was too expensive (Score:1)
A lot has changed in the last decade.
My university alone holds many dozens of patents on solar energy and battery technology, and the license fees are much cheaper than they would be if held by a private firm.
Go north (Score:1)
I've always thought fuel cells would be a good option for extreme northern and southern communities.
Solar is nice and all, but less useful the further you are from the equator. Whitehorse Yukon (60.7^ north latitude), for example, has a shortest day of less than 6 hours. Also, winter sun is low in the sky passes through a lot of atmosphere to reach your solar panel, so I imagine efficiencies would be sub-optimal.
But if you could use solar all summer to produce hydrogen that your fuel cell could run off all