Deployment follows successful pilot at a limited number of sites
American Tower Corporation’s African subsidiary (ATC Africa) and PowerX announced a strategic partnership to bring “significant efficiency and environmental benefits” to African telecoms infrastructure.
They will use PowerX’s AI solutions to optimise energy usage at tower sites after a successful joint programme at select sites in Burkina Faso, Kenya, Niger, Nigeria and Uganda.
Marek Busfy, SVP and Chief Executive Officer, ATC Africa stated, “ATC Africa has invested over $300 million in energy efficiency improvements, renewable energy deployments and energy storage solutions to reduce the use of fossil fuels at our site…
He added, “I am confident our strategic partnership will grow and contribute to our science-based targets to reduce [greenhouse gas] GHG emissions by at least 40% by 2035 against a 2019 baseline and deliver on our low GHG emissions site strategy.”
The solution manages power and provides accurate, auditable records regarding sustainability such as how much diesel and GHG emissions are eliminated from site operations.
PowerX’s CEO, Andrew Schafer, said, “We apply sophisticated machine learning and pattern recognition tools to existing site data to identify inefficiencies and anomalies previously buried deep in fragmented data sets.”
ATC Africa entered the African market in 2011 and operates more than 23,000 sites across Burkina Faso, Ghana, Kenya, Niger, Nigeria, South Africa and Uganda. The American parent comopany manages about 230,000 sites plus data centres in the US.
In October, ATC Africa agreed to let the Airtel Africa group use its comms sites and product development capacity in Kenya, Niger, Nigeria and Uganda in support of Airtel Africa’s network rollout.