MTC has yet again made a bold statement about its commitment to reduce its carbon footprint when the company inaugurated its first fully funded wind-powered solution on the Erindi Mountain, at the Erindi Game Reserve, in north-central Namibia on Friday.
The total cost to purchase, install and commission the wind generator is N$230 000.
The wind turbine that has been installed at Erindi has a vertical inclination, but MTC will in the near future install a wind turbine at Mile 108 that turns horizontally. The horizontal turbine is a new kind of turbine that is specifically suited for coastal regions. After Mile 108, a third wind-generated system will also be installed at the BTS site on the Sossusvlei Mountain in southern Namibia.
Tim Ekandjo, MTC's Chief Human Capital and Corporate Affairs Officer, said: “MTC applies these technologies to assure power to our equipment in areas not served by the national power grid. We also see this as MTC's modest contribution to the reduction of carbon footprint, nationally and globally.”
Ekandjo said MTC prides itself as a leader in energy efficiency in Namibia and that the company would do all that is within its reach to ensure that the environment is protected for the sake of the future generations.
The immediate benefit of the wind-powered solution for MTC is an increase in uptime ie, less failures and therefore an improved service to customers. “In future, MTC could feed excess power generated by these systems back into the national power grid, thus providing clean electricity to those communities who are currently using means that emit carbon dioxide to the ecosystem,” Ekandjo said.
Background
In 2006, Motorola and MTC trialled a combined solar and wind solution at the Dordabis BTS station. This was a project driven by Motorola to investigate and test a solar/wind solution. MTC and Motorola received an international award for this solution.
MTC has a number of BTS stations that are powered by a solar-only solution. In the raining season, with less sun available MTC does experience outages on some of these sites and to prevent these failures the company investigated the option of adding a wind generator to the solar system to have a stable power supply all year round.
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MTC
MTC (Mobile Telecommunications Limited) was established in 1995 as a joint venture between Namibia Post and Telecommunications Holdings (NPTH), Telia and Swedfund. During May 2004, NPTH concluded a deal that saw it hold 100% of the shares in MTC by acquiring the 49% held by Telia Overseas AB and Swedfund International AB. During 2006 the sale of 34% of MTC shares to Portugal Telecom was concluded for N$1.34 billion while the Namibian government retains the remainder of the stake through NPTH.
MTC currently covers 98% of the population of nearly 2 million citizens with more than 650 base stations and repeaters and offers a dual band 900/1800MHZ. The company also expanded its cellular coverage to all major towns in Namibia, including the major arterial roads. It further runs two modern MSC's (mobile switching centre) in Windhoek and Oshakati with capacity to accommodate rapidly rising number of customers of over 1.3 million active users. MTC also operates the only full service customer contact centre in Namibia dealing with service queries ranging from telephony, SMS, fax, GPRS, data, voicemail and 3G/HSDPA. A staff of 367 persons serves a diverse market of both pre- and post-paid subscribers.
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