The project develops a no carbon emitting and cost-competitive power generator based on patent pending ammonia to hydrogen generation technology and proton exchange membrane fuel cell. The eco-friendly power generator will primarily replace polluting and inefficient diesel gensets (DG) for powering mobile phone towers situated in poor and off grid areas.
All over the world in rural and rugged areas, disaster relief zones and in areas with no or unreliable grid connected power supply, expensive to operate and severely polluting diesel powered generators are deployed as power supply and backup. Even in urban areas on construction sites, for other temporary auxiliary installations and for emergency power backup systems in the mobile telephone infrastructure, these gensets are widely used. According to GSMA, the mobile operators by 2020 will burn €19 billion of diesel to operate the mobile telephone towers which is 30% of the operating cost of these towers and the Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) are searching for reliable alternatives to reduce cost. Not only that, the diesel gensets installed in mobile tower sites will emit 45 million tons of CO2 and a huge amount of NOx and other poisonous gases to the atmosphere . Because of stricter environmental regulation, the mobile operators may not afford to do that. In Bangladesh, for example, MNOs licenses are conditional upon implementing 5% of clean energy by 2018.
In case of the mobile telephone infrastructure and similar more permanent installations, other clean solutions to the power supply are solar PV and wind turbine systems with battery back-up. However, in many sites these solutions are not applicable, due to local weather conditions, huge seasonal change in the available renewable energy source (sun & wind) or other constraints, like local restrictions on noise, pollution and visual impact on the environment. In these cases hydrogen fuelled PEM-fuel cells are the only alternative to DG. In spite being the cleanest fuel emitting only water while energy is generated, hydrogen widespread use is severely hindered by its very low energy density. Because of this issue with hydrogen, PEM fuel cells, in spite of having immense potential as clean energy generator, have not been able to find widespread applications as they deserve.
RenCat is developing and commercializing a unique zero carbon fuel cell based power generator that uses ammonia as fuel. The effective energy density of ammonia is six times that of hydrogen stored in gas cylinders and like hydrogen no CO2 is emitted. In other words, ammonia provides all the cleanliness of hydrogen at six times the energy density of hydrogen.
RenGen is preliminarily targeted at mobile phone towers situated at off grid and unreliable grid areas. The growth of mobile phone infrastructure has far outpaced the growth of electrical grid in the developing world. Therefore, in order to power the towers, the telecom operators are relying heavily on DGs. There are 1 million existing towers situated in unreliable and off-grid areas and 40000 new towers are coming up each year. According to Future Market Insight report, the global telecom tower power system market is projected to reach € 5.7 Billion by 2025 at an estimated CAGR of 12.2% during the forecast period . We target this huge and expanding market to provide a cost competitive and cleaner alternative to DG. The market segment (mobile tower backup) was chosen based on the immediate demand or market pull of the technology. The telecom operators are looking for cheaper and cleaner solutions to replace diesel generators. Hydrogen fuelled fuel cells are cleaner and more efficient solutions but the energy density of hydrogen is very low and the operation is expensive. Therefore, there is a demand for hydrogen like fuel with higher energy density and RenGen can meet that demand. The power generation cost is also cheaper than diesel generators for this application when Rencat technology is used. We have already signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Grameen Phone(GP), a subsidiary of Telenor and the largest operator in Bangladesh with over 55 million customers as a field test and product launch partner.
RenGen is a disruptive technology product, enabling for the first time on-demand, cost effective production of power from ammonia – a Carbon free and widely used chemicals, with only nitrogen and water emission. With RenGen, RenCat is set to displace presently used, increasingly regulated toxic and pollutant emitting diesel gensets (DG) in mobile tower sector and in turn in other on-site and on-board energy generation applications. By doing so, RenCat will:
• Save up to 50% in costs vs. present day solutions.
• Increase reliability of the mobile networks
• Help in the expansion of network in yet uncovered areas
• Reduce the environmental impact by eliminating carbon and other toxic gas emission
• Create a > €5B billion opportunity across its value chain.
