Ålcom, a telco from the Åland Islands, will deploy Elisa’s Distributed Energy Storage (DES) answer to make use of vitality from photo voltaic panels in cellular community operations for the primary time, following a profitable trial earlier this 12 months between Elisa, Ålcom and photo voltaic panel supplier Solel Åland.
The answer permits Ålcom to retailer and use photo voltaic vitality in its cellular community backup batteries to scale back prices and scale back its carbon emissions. The use of Elisa DES powered by AI/ML additional will increase the steadiness of Alcom’s cellular community and reduces grid dependency, which is especially helpful in Åland, a bunch of islands off the southwest coast of Finland .
The answer combines photo voltaic panels and batteries in a battery vitality storage system that captures and shops photo voltaic vitality when situations are favorable. This saved vitality powers the community and may be replenished from the grid, when wanted. Elisa DES optimizes the time to buy electrical energy from the grid by scheduling charging and discharging durations for batteries to make the most of low costs.
This is the primary time that photo voltaic vitality manufacturing has been added to an Elisa DES deployment. Until now, cellular community backup batteries had been powered solely by electrical energy from the grid. This new characteristic makes cellular community batteries extra environment friendly and promotes the continual improvement of DES options and performance, providing community operators new alternatives for the era and use of renewable vitality.
“This is a good milestone for us and Ålcom, and a concrete instance of optimizing using photo voltaic vitality with DES. This improvement proves how we will use AI/ML-powered expertise and renewable energy era in cellular community operations to fight local weather change and scale back carbon emissions. With the added advantages of price financial savings and improved community stability, we’re creating a number of winners,” stated Jukka- Pekka Salmenkaita, VP for AI and Special Projects at Elisa.
“We are happy so as to add photo voltaic vitality to our operations with Elisa DES. This funding is a part of Ålcom’s ongoing dedication to sustainability. Including photo voltaic manufacturing within the vitality combine will assist us scale back prices and acquire flexibility and a means to deal with the variability and uncertainty of vitality era, demand, and grid availability.DES, mixed with the bigger Li-Ion batteries used within the answer, may also be essential within the occasion of an outage from the grid for an extended time frame,” stated Peter Löfman, Head of Network from Ålcom.
The advantages of Elisa DES are usually not restricted to permitting community operators to entry price financial savings within the unavoidable price of obligatory backup vitality storage, it additionally opens up a brand new income stream from present balancing providers for the facility grid by making backup batteries a digital energy. vegetation (VPP).
Elisa DES load shifting means optimizes vitality consumption and use, shopping for vitality when costs are low and utilizing that saved vitality at peak occasions, lowering working prices.
“This type of democratization and real-time participation within the vitality market has by no means been accessible to telecom operators earlier than,” stated Henri Korpi, EVP for International Digital Services at Elisa. “Selling extra capability again to the grid to assist stability provide and demand is usually a supply of extra income for operators.”
The addition of renewables to the capabilities of Elisa DES permits telecom operators to contribute in a tangible and cost-effective approach to speed up the transition of vitality in direction of carbon neutrality, in addition to offering them with extra financial savings at price.
