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Power Technology

Wind, Solar & Biofuels to Power Remote Cell Towers 119

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the go-juice dept.
tcd004 writes "How do you set up a cell network when there's no power grid? Namibia, India and Nigeria are building towers using localized power sources to provide critical cell phone access to the most remote parts of their countries. Wind/solar hybrids, and biofuel power plants will power the radio towers, peripheral communications, and even the protective fencing around the installations."
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Wind, Solar & Biofuels to Power Remote Cell Towers More

Wind, Solar & Biofuels to Power Remote Cell Towers

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  • developing nations?! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by cashman73 ( 855518 ) on Friday March 09, 2007 @02:51PM (#18292926) Journal
    Heck! They need to put a couple of these suckers in Arizona (not Phoenix),... ;-)

    I-17 has horrible cell coverage in places, and could really use something better. The only cell phones that even work at the Grand Canyon are Verizon phones (although perhaps Verizon likes it that way).

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Vancorps ( 746090 )

      That's funny, when I went to the Grand Canyon my sister's verizon cell phone didn't work while my Sprint phone did. You're right though, reception is spotty on the 17. I drove cross country and the 17 was the only place I ever lost reception.

      The thing I still can fathom is why AZ doesn't use more solar power than it does with more 300 days of sun a year this is one of the best places on earth to try it out for real.

      • Try getting cell phone reception in the Freeways of Appalachia. I would have been screwed when driving through eastern Kentucky and Tennessee on I75 if my car had died.

        • I was fortunate as I came from the northern route on the 40. No issues there except for damned toll roads in NY. How I hate toll roads. The majority of the trip was fun except for Oklahoma where there was a toll every 5 feet and NY where we had to pay once.

          I've often considered getting a satphone, the service is cheap its just the phones are expensive.

        • Try going down I-79 in WV from Morganton to Charleston. About 150 miles of no coverage except in Fairmont and one other place where the waves are right. There are towers up but no antennas on them.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jandrese ( 485 )
        You don't have to go all "they're out to get you" on this issue. It's just the case that population density along I17 is too low and it hasn't been profitable for any of the existing cell companies to erect antennas across it yet. Solar power might actually be a good idea given the area though, especially since a lot of it is literally out in the middle of nowhere and it's expensive to run power lines out into the middle of nowhere.

      • Huh?

        If I can cut expenses (overhead) from my costs of operation, I could easily charge the same amount and make more profit. At least it's that way in the U.S.

        Maybe the part that I'm missing from your counterintuitive argument is that the amount CellTelco would be allowed to charge if it were regulated by that government, presuming they were subsidized/under contract by the government to setup service. If that is what you meant, then I see your point. Example being: If my company's network costs $1

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
          • it's called Opportunity Cost. In other words what am I losing by foregoing a better return on my investment. Unless there is some overwhelming reason such as long term opportunity to grow the market and profits (such as R&D costs), gov't regulation, or social reason then the better return should be chosen to maximize profits. Profit Maximization is the ethical mandate of business.
      • The cell towers near me have sizeable equipment enclosures with air conditioning. A solar array, with batteries for nightime use, big enough to run such equipment will pay for an awful lot of ten-cent kilowatt-hours.
        • The cell towers near me are a little larger than a desktop PC case. Most of the street cab is empty space and electrical plant, like the electricity meter and consumer unit. The tower itself resembles a street lamp post with the top three feet or so fattened out a bit.

          Out in the sticks, a cell site is a small cabin with a diesel genny and a lattice mast. Often several competing companies are co-sited on the same mast with gear in the same cabin. Once a week a guy with a Landrover tows a fuel bowser up a

      • Here in the US, if somebody wants something, they'd better damned well be ready to pay for it.

        No, here in the US, people simply demand more higher-end services for poor people living in mud huts.

        Most people in the US will complain when their sound quality just drops, or when their internet access slows down... To the poor, a poor signal is perfectly acceptable. And a lot of hassle, like attaching a 10' antenna wire to your cell phone is something they wouldn't think twice about. No such luck here.

        If peop

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dodobh ( 65811 )
        In India, the government isn't financing the towers. Cellphone companies get hit by punitive taxes if they don't build those towers. The problem is that the electric power supply isn't all that reliable.
    • I often take the drive from Tucson to Prescott or Flagstaff (I-10, I-17), and my Sprint phone gets undivided service the entire distance (save for one tiny stretch of road just south of Phoenix).

      It would be cool if all services just used all the same towers, then it wouldn't matter which provider you have. :\
    • Why cant they require those types of power sources for all towers and public buildings and all public utilities that require power. Maybe the initial setup would be high but look at the long haul. Plus the street lights could then run all night long instead of turning off at certain times to conserve money. Not power.
  • are staggering, this is an excellent idea. Let's hope the implementation is on par.

    • Long ago one of my power generation professors gave a lecture about a solar powered communications tower he set up, in Nevada I think it was. He said the one thing they did not account for and which made the project unprofitable was crazy hicks with rifles shooting the solar panels for sport, from the next mountain over. Don't forget to include a robot sentry with a sniper rifle in the implementation.

      • Re: (Score:1, Offtopic)

        by operagost ( 62405 )
        I, for one, welcome our automated anti-crazy hick gun platform equipped, solar-powered, communication tower overlords.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Intron ( 870560 )
        More likely city folk who think of guns as fun instead of being a tool. Note: for purposes of this post, "city folk" are any people who can see their neighbor's house from theirs. Real hicks can find plenty of target practice shooting varmints and such.

        On the other hand, if a company builds a road into my favorite spot and puts up an ugly cell tower, they can expect a few holes in it. But I don't consider that crazy.

        • More likely city folk who think of guns as fun instead of being a tool.

          How many "city folk" do you suppose are armed on mountains so remote you need a helicopter to bring in construction materials?

          Real hicks can find plenty of target practice shooting varmints and such.

          I've lived in a number of places that could easily be considered hicksville. I used to carry a pistol on my belt to get from the place I was staying to the nearest road because of all the bears. There are plenty of "hicks" who just like shooting things. I knew some guys when I was a kid who used to go shoot out the tires of logging trucks, not because they disliked logging, but

        • If your neighbour's house is half a mile away, and you can still see it, then is it still a city? That doesn't even sound like a town to me.

          You don't consider it crazy when you shoot somebody's property just because it's in your favourite spot? That kind of justifies the previous nations killing you for being in their favourite spot. Do you limit it to roads and towers only? What about roads and houses? What about just roads? Does the spot have to be a favourite spot of somebody, or can we just shoot?

    • Indeed. I've often wondered how many resources are used just to push usable energy around, and if there is in fact a benefit to having massively distributed power generation rather than massive power plants.

      Sure, this would have to be a different paradigm then shipping fuels to a single location, but you'd think that everyone could have a solar array and windmill on their property - except for goofy things like zoning and 'beautification' rules :(

      Heck, using that method you don't even lose all the power i

      • don't forget "biofuel"..

        usually that is a more "gentle" term for cowflops or other dung.

        think about it... a power plant in the corner of everyone's back yard that takes what goes down your toilet : )

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by drinkypoo ( 153816 )

        Indeed. I've often wondered how many resources are used just to push usable energy around, and if there is in fact a benefit to having massively distributed power generation rather than massive power plants.

        A pity you didn't just Look it up [wikipedia.org]. Then you'd have known it was around 7% in the US and UK. Which yes, is fucking huge. In 2003 the total consumption of electricity in the US was 3,656 billion kilowatt-hours [cslforum.org]. you do the math...

        • around 7% in the US and UK. Which yes, is fucking huge.

          Good luck getting better than 93% efficiency with inverters and (cheap) batteries... or any other storage and conversion methods for that matter.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by mdsolar ( 1045926 )
        Losses are about 7% on the grid http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_trans m ission#Losses [wikipedia.org]. While this is significant it is not huge. The real problem is stringing out lines to remote locations which is expensive.
        --
        Destress the grid: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html [blogspot.com]
      • It could be cheaper to use solar panels, and have a gross and net energy savings sometimes. It costs money run wires along to every household. Just as many homes have wells, and their own sewage, it makes sense that they wouldn't be connected to the power grid. In those situations solar, wind and others could be a solution.
      • If everyone had a solar array and a windmill on their property, that would take care of a huge problem with nuclear power plants: the disposal of nuclear waste. But what happens when someone develops a more efficient method of energy, like using by-products from consumables used by those living on the property? Then people will definitely be out of work, because there is really nothing left for them to maintain.
  • To "localized power sources" But of course, slashdot standards require that you spend more than 20 seconds on a single thought, so I added this sentence.
  • Why does the fencing need electricity? Are these cell towers for Jurassic Park or something?

    • Re:powered fencing? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by smooth wombat ( 796938 ) on Friday March 09, 2007 @03:03PM (#18293128) Journal
      Why does the fencing need electricity?


      Thievery and yes, probably because of elephants (think scratching posts).

      With the amount of metal that would be in these things and considering the poverty of the countries mentioned, you can be absolutely sure that if the fencing was not electrified, the equipment would be stolen the same night it was installed and sold for scrap metal.

      Let's put it this way, even in the stable country of Iraq, entire towers which hold up electrical wires are toppled and sold for scrap. Think what would happen to this equipment if it were placed next to a roadway in one of the three countries and didn't have any form of protection.

      • ...yes, here in the USSK, people steal the copper cables from the railway signalling circuits and sell those for scrap, too. (I know, I know: In Soviet Britain, coppers steal YOU!)

        Or maybe that's just the latest British Rail v3.0 excuse for having a Third World railway.

      • Let's put it this way, even in the stable country of Iraq, entire towers which hold up electrical wires are toppled and sold for scrap.

        Stable? Doesn't look so stable from where I'm watching...
        (Hint: I'm on planet earth.)

        Seriously though, without protection/law even the towers here in the US would vanish into thin air.
        • Stable? Doesn't look so stable from where I'm watching...
          (Hint: I'm on planet earth.)

          Hint: turn on your sarcasm/snarky meter.

          I was referring to the comments that we are repeatedly told from the White House and Faux News that things are going swimmingly in Iraq. That the good news isn't being reported because the liberal media doesn't want it to get out.

          After all, reporting on things such as electrical towers being taken down to be sold for scrap and the fact that most residents of Baghdad o

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by slim-t ( 578136 )
        Let's put it this way, even in the stable country of Iraq, entire towers which hold up electrical wires are toppled and sold for scrap.

        a. Iraq is stable??

        b. This happens in the US. About 15 years ago (I can't find anything on the web about it) some people who started taking supports off a huge tower holding up power lines supplying an iron ore mine in Hibbing, MN. The plan was to sell them for scrap, but the tower fell down and they were killed.

    • It is Africa. In Africa *anything* gets stolen, unless it is too big and heavy to carry off, in which case, it gets loused up so badly that no-one will even want to poke the poor thing with a ten foot pole afterwards. Most Africans are still firmly in the pre-stone age...

      Namibia used to deploy anti-personnel land-mines around high tension power pylons. I don't know whether they still need to do that, but I won't be surprised if the cell base stations also have those, in addition to the electrified fences

  • Protective Fencing? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Radon360 ( 951529 ) on Friday March 09, 2007 @02:59PM (#18293070)

    So they're installing electric fences around these sites to prevent theft and looting of equipment/metals? Cute.

    Now all someone has to do to compromise that is to booger up the solar panel (Water balloon slingshot with mudpies), or throw a rope into the windmill (or drop it in with a kite) and wait several days.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by skuzz03 ( 970606 )
      Some electric fence chargers can run a month or more on a single 12v car battery (we used to use some on horse pastures.) Solar + wind + generator + battery backup = long long wait. Would probably be easier to just catapult a cow through the fence ala Monty Python. Or maybe just cover the entire installation in razorwire. The emergency road phones out on the remote highways between Arizona and California are all solar powered cell phones. The solar panels are individually wrapped in razorwire to prevent

      • But an electric fence for a horse/cow is a whole different animal (pardon the pun). Basically, you charge up a coil, much like a coil on the ignition system in a car and pulse it into the fence wire at roughly 1 second intervals. The "off" time allows the fencer to last that long on a battery, and the interval is usually sufficient to get the offending animal to stop leaning on the fence. It keeps animals in, but doesn't really offer any security, nor will it melt away someone's attempt to ground fault/s

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by skuzz03 ( 970606 )
          This is true that they pulse, in this case they could pick a rapid-pulse charger that wouldn't last as long on battery but make it harder to accomplish anything between pulses. A pulse can be annoying enough a deterrent to stop them from trying to short it out. Especially some of those "weed-snapper" models that have enough of a powerful zap to zap through growth around the wire.

          Maybe they could just build moats around the cell sites and put dragons inside!

    • I imagine the cell company will configure them to monitor for low batteries and go check them out when they're not working properly.

      • No doubt they will...but what will their response time be? I hope it's better than what we generally see around here at sites that are far more accessible.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by arcite ( 661011 )
      No worries, electric fencing always has a power backup (atleast 12-24 hours)... there would also be a transmitter attached to an alarm, so if anyone touched the fence, they first get shocked (that would probably knock them out) and an alarm would go off alerting security. Remote regions of Nigeria are very dusty and harsh in general, so I suspect there would be weekly (if not daily) inspections. If someone really wanted to put the tower out of commission they could just fire-bomb it.
    • Why not just ground the fence or wear rubber gloves? Although, a mudapult would be cool...
  • How are "HP Sponsored Solutions" and "compare prices" related to this story in any way? Is HP building these towers? Are there multiple suppliers of these towers, so that we might need to compare prices? WTF is this place turning into?
  • Kashawak - NO FO!!!!

  • Just in time! (Score:4, Funny)

    by stratjakt ( 596332 ) on Friday March 09, 2007 @03:07PM (#18293176) Journal
    My friend, the prince of nigeria, is going to be calling me about the 100 million dollars he's going to give me for helping him out!
    • Sorry, I beat you to the punch I just emailed him my account information for the transfer. You can have the next 100 million.

  • Also (Score:4, Insightful)

    by skuzz03 ( 970606 ) on Friday March 09, 2007 @03:08PM (#18293200)
    Those bits of Utah where you drive a hundred miles just north of the AZ/UT border and there's no power, lights, phone, electricity, anything for seemingly forever. The only way to call for help out there is with a satphone.

    Talk about no bars in no places!

    They have enough sunlight out there in the deserts it should be relatively easy to implement a solar-only with generator-backup power system to keep the sites up, then use microwave point-to-point links between sites and dual uplinks on either side of the network for redundancy in the event sites in the middle fail.

    Providers won't bother doing that though, they have no population out there to cover, and why would they care about public safety? They're too busy wasting resources deploying mobile TV and camera phones and video phones and all their other useless nonsense.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by geekoid ( 135745 )
      You know, there is nothing wrong from being away from it all.

    • Can we dispense with the anti-corporate bullshit? If you want service out there for public safety, start chipping in cash yourself. Otherwise, service will be put out there when it's commericially viable.
    • Are you seriously advocating for many millions of dollars to be spent erecting cell towers in the middle of nowhere?

      People have been driving long distances for 80 years now, and have a glorious tradition of cell-phone free long-distance travel going back to when we were monkeys.

      It's not like you *have* to drive through the middle of nowhere. There are tons of cities to live in. If you want to live way out in the country, you're already assuming all sorts of problems. (no police response, ever, no emergency

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by skuzz03 ( 970606 )
        Let me know how to chip in for adding communications out in those remote areas and I'll chip in. ;) While we're at it, don't make the broad-sweeping naive assumption that people live in remote areas to have to go through them. I never lived in Death Valley, yet I drove through it and had cell service. Conversely, try driving from Colorado through Utah to Arizona and plan yourself a route with coverage of some sort. One is limited in the routes one can take, regardless of living there or not. Anyway, Joe
  • In the age of gas lamps, before natural gas, wood or coal would be gasified and piped to you from the local gas plant. There'd be one in any city of any size. They were absolutely filthy and many times more polluting than anything going on now.

    I see the same sort of thing springing up in Nigeria. I'm just pointing out that this is about setting up an infrastructure, and it's doubtful there's anything "green" about it.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by skuzz03 ( 970606 )
      Miniature fission reactors at each site! Think of all the advantages, we can help them jump-start their rightful place in the nuclear arms race. Maybe then they'll stop e-mailing me about their deceased grandpa and his grand fortune.
    • The difference is that we're more concerned about efficiency now, for a variety of reasons. And in Africa, there's not a lot of fuel lying around. In fact this is why the rocket stove [efn.org] was invented; so that people could make better use of available fuels so they could stop cooking their food over plastic fires and such. Where they're using solar panels, they are STILL making use of centralized energy - it goes into the construction of the panel. Where they're using wood, they'll probably try to burn it as ef
  • Or, you could run power in alongside the lines that you laid when connecting the cell towers to the wired network. Somewhere down the way is a plug you could use.

    • 1) Who says there's a wire connecting the cell tower to the network? It could be a satellite link, it could be a microwave link to the ground. But I only glanced over TFA.
      2) A non-POTS communication line isn't good to anyone, except for perhaps monetary value. Electricity, however, is always useful. They wouldn't want people stealing their power. It's also quite expensive to string all that heavy cable up so that you can transmit the power without exceptional losses.

    • The tower interconnects are likely to be microwave relay-based. Not only would it be less expensive, but you wouldn't have all that copper wire vulnerable for someone to come along and steal.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dbIII ( 701233 )

      Somewhere down the way is a plug you could use.

      What if there isn't - not everyone lives in a city.

      Australia has a lot of solar powered repeaters for various bits of comminications gear - often on mountain tops kilometres away from a powerline.

    • Well, wireless systems are really wireless. They use microwave wireless back-haul. Namibia is the world's oldest desert. It has very few people - about a million. It has very few roads - one going north-south and another going east-west and that is about it. It has one power station and imports half its electricity from its neighbours. Most of Namibia consists of nothing but rocks and sand and connecting the few places that have something besides rocks and sand is very hard indeed. The two things Nami

  • Interesting (Score:4, Insightful)

    by edwardpickman ( 965122 ) on Friday March 09, 2007 @03:23PM (#18293382)
    how often third world countries embrace alternative sources where as we're told they are too expensive in the first world. There's a good reason many use alternative sources in these countries, the lack of an infastructure for delivering power.
    • They arent embracing anything. What they're doing will be many, many times worse for the environment than what the modern world has (centralized production of power and distribution).

      Think of the turn of the century gasification plants that were in every city, before natural gas and electricity. They were an abomination.

      No, this isn't "green energy", it's "whatever gets the job done".

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by marcog123 ( 969158 )

      The main reason is the rapid increase in uptake of cell phones in developing regions. The cellular providers are ripping off the people in these countries simply because they can. And the people are so hooked on cell phones that they fall for the trap. It's like the new in thing. You'd be surprised.

      I'm from South Africa and one of our lecturers who researches HCI went to Zambia for two months to study the use of cell phones. He said you'd be amazed at where you'd find cell towers - in the middle of the mi

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dodobh ( 65811 )
        Well, usually the choice is between having no phone, and a cheap cellphone, My cellphone bill this month was just under 8 USD, for example.

        Other than the lack of number portability, I am not tied to any provider (All the private players have support for number portability, the ogvernment owned one is not willing to budge yet). I can buy a 25 USD phone today without any contracts or obligations.

        Cellphones are far cheaper than landlines (and available).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Leebert ( 1694 )
      I was recently in Haiti. While in the airport waiting for the flight back, I was talking to a guy from a Canadian firm erecting towers for the country's exploding GSM rollout. He explained to me that the power there is so unreliable, each cell site has 2 diesels, which run on 10 hour cycles. (Indeed, I did experience the unreliability) They don't even bother with local power infrastructure.

      What that must cost to install and run at each tower is quite surprising to me.
    • [Interesting] how often third world countries embrace alternative sources where as we're told they are too expensive in the first world.

      That's the exact reason they're too expensive: We have an existing delivery system in place that they can't afford to build. I think the concept of massively overhauling our existing large systems is going to massively drain what resources we already have.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Rakishi ( 759894 )
        Actually while to us building such a system is cost effective since its used for many things in poor countries it wouldn't be since it'd be used for very few things. The same thing holds in the US, in some places its cheaper to have your own power generation than to extend the grid simply to cover a single house in the middle of nowhere. Also in such countries getting fuel to such a site reliably would be much harder than in the US.
        • Absolutely. We do see smaller projects of this nature in some locations. Solar power has become big among people wanting to run smaller devices without hard-wiring them. Some of these are no so obvious as "lawn lights" but others would be radio repeaters and the like.
    • You have to qualify 'too expensive' better, since the power situation is a lot more complicated than that.

      For example, the biggest problem with wind and solar is that they are unreliable. Supply and demand for electricity have to match instanteously, which can be sort of hard to do if a large portion of your power supply has random output depending upon weather.

      In general, initial capital costs tend to be steep enough to discourage or even prevent entry into the power market. A lot of older, less efficient
    • They're too expensive considering that in most places of the US, electrical infrastructure already exists. Alternative energy has to compete with that in-place infrastructure. There is no infrastructure in third world countries (or only a bit, depending on the location). Only then can alternative energy prices compete, as they're up against the build out costs of infrastructure.
  • This is more important than it sounds--the remote and underdeveloped areas of the world that need cell phone penetration more than the developed world does, because the increase in efficiency they create for the local economy is more important when so many people are living at or below sustenance level. (Cell phone usage raises a community's GDP, at least to a point.)

  • I think I see a flaw (Score:2, Insightful)

    by jeffeb3 ( 1036434 )
    How do the locals power their new cell phones exactly?
    • Probably via landline power. But it's very likely that that landline power supply a)is intermittant and/or b)doesn't reach to the nearest cell tower, which is often located on a hill outside town.
    • The bigger places have electricity. Shanty towns sometimes have electricity, but all of them have a 'battery charging' infrastructure. Someone with electricity or a generator, will charge heaps of car batteries. These gets delivered by donkey cart to power all kinds of things: Television sets, phones, radios, ghetto blasters, cash registers and so on. It is really amazing to see.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dodobh ( 65811 )
      Power supply isn't reliable (you will get power for 8 hours a day, but not round the clock).

  • Stupid question (Score:1, Redundant)

    by duckworth ( 71247 )
    If there is no power infrastructure in the area, how are they going to charge their cell phones?
  • HI I am a representative for the Prince of Arkansas, and I am wanting to present you with a gourgous opportunity. If you will be kind enough to give me your bank account information I would be very happy to set you up with some solar cell access.

    PLEASE NO MORE CONNECTIVITY FOR NIGERIA... PLEASE!!!!
  • Do a Wikipedia search for RTG which stands for Radioisotope thermoelectric generator.

    It takes the heat produced from the natural decay of a radioactive material and converts it into electricity. For about ever 500 watts of wasted heat you get 100 watts of electricity.

    1 kg of 238pu (plutonium 238) would produce 100 watts of power for nearly a century. How much electricity do they need?

    The reason I would choose 238pu is because it is pretty safe. If some how there was an accident, which would mean at least

    • I imagine that, in Africa, such a thing couldn't be deployed due to (rational or irrational; doesn't matter which) fears of terrorists collecting the plutonium and using it in a bomb.

      • You're being serious? saying RTG implementations couldn't be deployed out of fears of terrorists collecting the plutonium and using it in a bomb doesn't make much since because If they wanted to what would keep terrorists from collecting the plutonium simply for the purpose of building a bomb rather than it just being a byproduct of the searching for it for a RTG?

        The bomb that could be produced from a 238pu material would be the most simplest least dangerous type of radioactive bomb known to exist. Not I

        • You're being serious? saying RTG implementations couldn't be deployed out of fears of terrorists collecting the plutonium and using it in a bomb doesn't make much since because If they wanted to what would keep terrorists from collecting the plutonium simply for the purpose of building a bomb rather than it just being a byproduct of the searching for it for a RTG?

          First of all, it's sense, not "since."

          Second, I'm not sure I understand what you mean. My point was that putting plutonium on a cellphone tower

  • "The solar/wind tower also runs the protective fencing around the site" This really sounds like good old Africa to me - sigh.

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