Diesel Generator for Telecom Sites

The load of a telecom site

A telecom site is small but the equipment is sensitive: the base station, the microwave link, the rectifier and the battery bank. The generator normally feeds the rectifier on the -48 V DC bus, and the site controller decides when the set starts, how long it runs and when it stops. Sizing is straightforward: the total AC load of the site, plus the starting current of the biggest motor, plus a margin for the rectifier’s own losses.

The fuel decides the autonomy

On a telecom site the fuel is the real constraint, because the refuelling truck has to reach the site. A 100 kW set burns about 26 litres an hour at full load, so a 500 litre day tank is roughly nineteen hours of running. The usual arrangement is a large bulk tank on site, a transfer pump and a smaller day tank next to the set, with a level sensor on both. We size the tanks from the consumption and the refuelling interval you give us, and we quote the pipework with it.

Security is part of the specification

The equipment on a telecom site is worth stealing, and the fuel is worth draining. The enclosure is lockable, the filler cap and the control panel are lockable, and the doors use anti-tamper screws. On sites that have had problems, the GSM monitoring with a door sensor and a fuel level sensor is worth more than the lock on its own, because it tells you when something happens rather than after it happens.

The noise in a residential area

A tower next to houses is a common situation. The silent canopy set with acoustic lining and a discharge silencer brings the noise down to roughly 70 dB(A) at 7 m, and the exhaust is ducted up and away from the doors and windows of the nearest building. In a country with strict night-time noise limits we quote the canopy with the extra roof insulation and the low-temperature radiator pack.

Heat, dust and altitude

A site in the desert or in the mountains takes power away from the set. The standard rating is for 40 °C at sea level; above that, or above 2000 m, the output has to be derated or the set specified for the derated rating. Send the altitude and the highest ambient temperature and we will confirm the rating in writing, together with the fuel consumption at the site altitude, which is higher than the catalogue figure.

Remote monitoring

The start, the stop, the fuel level, the temperature and the fault codes can be reported over GSM or Wi-Fi to the network operations centre. That is what lets a small team look after hundreds of sites: the site controller tells them what happened, and the fuel order can be placed before a site goes down.

What we deliver

Open frame or silent canopy, 50 Hz or 60 Hz, with the day tank, the bulk tank, the transfer pump, the heaters, the battery charger, the float charger and the monitoring written into the same quotation. Every set is run at full load in the factory before it is loaded, and the test record travels with the machine.