Launch of the Bladon MTG set to disrupt power for telecom towers
09 October 2018
Written by Stuart Kelly
Bladon Micro Turbine (“Bladon”), the pioneer in the design development, engineering and manufacturer of micro turbine gensets (“MTGs”), announces today at the influential TowerXchange Meetup Africa 2018 the launch of its first commercial product, the Bladon MTG12, a 12kW (15kVA equivalent) micro turbine genset developed specifically for the global telecom tower market.
With a total cost of ownership up to 30% lower than conventional diesel gensets, the Bladon MTG is transforming the way power is provided to telecom towers across the continent of Africa.
- It offers up to 8,000-hour service intervals, which translates to 90% fewer site visits than conventional diesel gensets
- its fuel flexibility lowers fuel costs and will reduce fuel theft; a multi-million-dollar problem for mobile networks globally;
- the MTG is secure by design and reduces the risk of theft with tamper proof internal hinges, single service door access, no parts that can be reused for conventional diesel gensets and;
- with only one moving part, no liquid coolant or engine oil to dispose of, the MTG provides ultra-low noise and vibration free operation along with class leading emissions that make it cleaner, quieter and significantly reduces the MTG genset’s overall environmental impact when compared to conventional diesel gensets.
These benefits have been demonstrated through field trials conducted this year in South Africa, Uganda and Nigeria.
Over 50% of a towerco network’s operating expenses can be attributed to maintenance and fuel costs for their energy equipment. Any technology or process that can reliably reduce this goes straight to their bottom line. There is an increasing appetite from the market now to embrace innovative ways to tackle this difficult problem especially in Africa and Asia where network grids can be unreliable and where tens of thousands of towers are off grid.
We have been working with Bladon for the last 12 months refining the offering of its micro turbine genset for the African market. We are now ready to show to our clients how the Bladon MTG can transform the way discrete reliable power is delivered to the telecom tower with an astonishing once a year service regime compared to once a month for a conventional diesel genset. As a partner of Bladon’s, we are excited to begin delivering and supporting this solution.
The Bladon MTG will be unveiled at today’s TowerXchange Meetup Africa 2018, the pre-eminent, invitation-only event for Directors, VP and C-level decision makers in the African telecom tower industry which is made up of more than 200,000 towers on the continent. The Bladon MTG has been eagerly anticipated by the industry and Bladon is working with leading Mobile Network Operators and Towercos to deploy its MTG.
The well-established telecom tower power market is ideal to showcase the benefits of our disruptive MTG, which offers dependable power for significantly longer than the incumbent conventional diesel genset, requiring less frequent intervention, with reduced environmental impact and greater security from theft. Our field trials of the MTG have demonstrated these benefits to our customers, who are now looking forward to making very significant cost savings by its adoption. We look forward to presenting our best of British engineering Bladon MTG to the industry over the next few days.
