German power solutions provider Heliocentris Energy Solutions AG has received a firm purchase order to deliver hybrid power solutions for the ongoing mobile network rollout in Myanmar, the firm said.
This is the largest single purchase order since the company’s foundation in 1995, it said.
The order comprises the delivery and installation of hybrid power solutions for the build-out of 150 mobile base stations in Myanmar and has a value of $4-6 million depending on the exact site configuration to be delivered, said the Berlin-based company, which deals in solutions and services for energy efficiency and distributed power systems.
The orders will be shipped and installed within the next 3-4 months, Heliocentris said.
The power solutions comprise Heliocentris’ proprietary “Energy Management System” and also include diesel generators, batteries, power electronics, cabinets and peripheral material from other power components suppliers.
The two foreign mobile operators, Telenor from Norway and Ooredoo from Qatar, who were awarded 15-year-licences to operate mobile phone networks in Myanmar in June last year have now started their initial rollout phases which entail construction of more than 2,000 mobile base stations within the next 12 months.
The towers for these mobile base stations will be installed and operated by tower companies such as Apollo Towers and Irrawaddy Green Towers and require power solutions for a variety of configurations reaching from on-grid to bad-grid and off-grid sites.
“Participating in the roll-out from its initial phase creates an outstanding opportunity for Heliocentris to gain a significant share in the coming build-out of the mobile networks in Myanmar,” Ayad Abul-Ella, CEO of Heliocentris, said.
Myanmar is one of the few remaining telecommunications frontiers, with only 10 percent of its 60 million people holding a mobile-phone subscription, according to industry estimates. That compares to penetration rates of 70 percent in Cambodia, 90 percent in Laos and over 100 percent in Thailand.
According to official statements, the Myanmar government plans to increase the percentage of phone owners to 80 percent by 2016.
In order to achieve this ambitious goal, new mobile licences were awarded to Telenor from Norway and Qatar Telecom in June of last year. Both operators will have to meet population and geographical coverage targets to ensure that the country’s large rural population is covered.
This is expected to require more than 18,000 mobile base stations being erected greenfield over the course of the next three years, with most of them in bad-grid or off-grid situations.
Ayad said: “We have designed site specific power solutions that fulfil the five main requirements of our customers in an optimal manner: best energy efficiency, lowest total cost of ownership with maximum up-time, the security of multiple sourcing for the key power components and seamless upgrading options to higher capacities for multi tenant usage.
He said with this order the foundation for “further significant business in Myanmar” has been laid and the firm looks forward to winning “additional multi-million purchase orders in the coming months.”
The company’s flagship product “Energy Manager” enables connectivity between different components in hybrid energy supply clusters, such as batteries, solar panels, conventional diesel generators or fuel cells. It targets primarily base stations of mobile telecom operators in world regions with poor and unreliable grid-coverage such as the Middle East and Southeast Asia.
