Powering the cellular revolution, one windmill at a time

BARCELONA - Unless you're in the cell tower business you've probably never heard of Flexenclosure, a Swedish firm that builds steel huts for cell tower equipment around the world. That might soon change. This tiny company is on a Quixotic mission to supply the developing world with cellular communications without filling the air with carbon.

Their idea: harnessing the power of the wind and the sun to bring 21st century telecommunications to remote areas of the world. In short, Flexenclosure is literally tilting at windmills.

Over the next three years the world's cellular market will add well over a billion new users, the vast majority in the developing world in remote locations far from the power grid. To reach these new mobile users they'll need more cell towers - some 120,000 of them, says James Kan, VP of marketing for Flexenclosure.

A typical cell tower requires a diesel generator running 24/7 and consuming 20,000 liters of fuel annually. All told, these new cell towers will dump the equivalent of a year's worth of London traffic emissions into the atmosphere, says Kan.

Flexenclosure's idea centers around what it calls the 'E-site': an 8-by-12 steel hut with a small solar panel on top, next to a wind turbine installed on the cell tower some 30 to 60 meters high. Those in turn feed banks of lithium ion batteries that power the electronics inside the hut. When the sun goes down and the wind dies, a diesel backup engine will kick in to keep the juice flowing. Sophisticated monitoring equipment switches intelligently between power sources and keeps the batteries literally refrigerated during peak use, so they don't overheat.

To promote its solution, the company built a model E-site at this year's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, complete with windmill. The turbine's blades "are twisted like a piece of macaroni" says Kan - a unique design that allows them to operate at wind speeds as low as 2 meters per second, instead of the 6 meters per second required by most turbines.

Bottom line, says Kan: Each E-site will cut costs and carbon for each cell tower by 80 percent. From savings in fuel costs alone, each site will pay for itself in 18 to 24 months - and last 15 to 20 years.

Flexenclosure isn't the only company with this idea. Another Swedish firm, Morphic Technologies, is also promoting the concept of using small wind turbines to replace diesel engines in cell towers. But Morphic isn't focusing on the developing world, says Chief Operating Officer Kenneth Johansson, and unlike Flexenclosure it provides only power generation, not the full turnkey solution. Morphic is promoting the use of eco-friendly hydrogen fuel cells instead of lithium ion batteries.

But there are bigger issues at stake than even global warming. The ultimate goal, says Kan, is "connecting the unconnected" - enabling cell communications, and by extension Internet access, to parts of the globe where you can't just plug in a laptop and scan for WiFi hotspots or tap a button on your iPhone. And if you can do it without dumping more carbon into the air, why the Hell not?

"Today you have to pollute the environment just so you can make a cell call in a remote area," notes Kan. "It's obscene."

When not roaming Las Ramblas in Barcelona, Dan Tynan tends his blogs, Culture Crash and Tynan on Tech.