Slashdot Mirror
Fuel Cells Promise To Reduce Carbon Emissions of Mobile Base Stations
Mickeycaskill writes: Vodafone says fuel cells could reduce the carbon emissions and noise pollution caused by mobile base stations in remote areas of developing economies. The company has 122 million mobile data customers in emerging markets and needs to expand its network in these countries to meet demand. However many base stations are in rural areas where grid power is unreliable and need on-site power generation. These are typically diesel powered, but Vodafone wants to move away from this type of power and says solar power is too expensive and not suitable for urban areas. It has already deployed 200 fuel cells in South Africa and wants to replicate the model elsewhere.
The article says the justification for fuel cells is because grid power isn't reliable in rural areas. Fine, that makes sense. But the justification for using solar is that it's not suitable for urban areas. I'm confused why the power grid isn't good enough in urban areas while using solar for base stations in rural areas. Am I missing something? Also, why not use wind energy and mount turbines on the towers in rural areas to provide additional power?
Long term damage of the planet is perhaps even bigger with "cell of any type" - primarily due to carcinogenic & lethal disposable parts that need to be stored in underground, lead shielded bunkers. Phosphoric Acid or H2SO4 are corrosive... they eat metals!
Go Solar. - a kickass way would be to do away with batteries completely & use solar to store capacitor based energy on a slow discharge.
Wind turbines kill Pigeons & Sparrows - see any large scale wind turbine project - what they dont tell you is how many bird "hits" are happening.
The main commercial source of hydrogen at the moment is by catalysis from hydrocarbons, thereby pumping CO2 into the atmosphere. I don't think Vodafone has got the foggiest with this line of reasoning.
Something like this http://yatebts.com/sat_site.ph... and you don't need oil greedy, smelly generators.
You are all cows. Cows say moo. MOOOOOOOOOO! MOOOOOOOOO! Moo cows MOOOOOOOO! Moo say the cows. YOU COWS!!
The TFA states that some fuels cells can use menthol or even water?!? Fringe science LOL
Are you sick of it yet? Endless propaganda about 'carbon'. I take it the oxygen part of 'carbon dioxide' isn't a problem either, since they refer to 'carbon emissions'.
There is no such thing as 'catastrophic man-made global warming', and the Earth is now entering a period of global cooling, caused by the sun (as always.)
www.wattsupwiththat.com
www.climatedepot.com
10, 20, 30 kw? More?
It seems kind of hard to judge what the generation options are without knowing how much power an individual site uses.
Fuel cells should be more widely available before long and fuel every bit as quickly as gasoline cars, which is precisely why evs are never going anywhere except perhaps niche applications and greentards.
I like'em, but I'm afraid that not for the same reasons as the eco zealots.
I recall sometime in the last decade that Hughes had plans to commercialize a fuel cell capable of powering a large home, including its HVAC demand were it to be located in AZ. The predicted price would the same as that of an HVAC system, or some $5000 then. It was target at the rural market, where many homes already have propane tanks for their cooking and heating needs, but far from the expensive rural grid.
It was a quite exciting prospect, bringing about the possibility of decentralizing - and thus depoliticizing - energy creation and distribution, were such fuel cells to become standard implements of modern homes, including other forms of energy generation and storage, where it made sense.
However, it came and was gone, having never heard of it again. Perhaps the residential market, being not exactly driven by running but mostly by acquisition costs, wasn't the right one and focus was changed to the commercial market, especially as an UPS alternative, and such applications, which make the case of fuel cells quite appropriately.
A lot has changed in the last decade.
My university alone holds many dozens of patents on solar energy and battery technology, and the license fees are much cheaper than they would be if held by a private firm.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I've always thought fuel cells would be a good option for extreme northern and southern communities.
Solar is nice and all, but less useful the further you are from the equator. Whitehorse Yukon (60.7^ north latitude), for example, has a shortest day of less than 6 hours. Also, winter sun is low in the sky passes through a lot of atmosphere to reach your solar panel, so I imagine efficiencies would be sub-optimal.
But if you could use solar all summer to produce hydrogen that your fuel cell could run off all winter, I think you might be on to something. Remember 6 hours of daylight in December means 18 hours of daylight in June (when you're using little if any lights and heat)
I just don't know if the inherent energy costs of splitting water vs energy gained in a fuel cell would let this be a viable idea. And I wouldn't want to think about paying for such a system.