Comsol’s networks delivered virtually uninterrupted connectivity to all customers throughout the recent spate of stage six load-shedding, thanks to clever design and a proactive approach to power management.
Darren Morgan, Chief Operations Officer at Comsol, says the leading last mile access provider has prioritised power since inception, ensuring its infrastructure draws less power than most, and has resilience built in. “Thanks to the team’s careful planning and design when they started rolling out our infrastructure in 2016, our network passed the test of the stage six load-shedding, where many of our competitors were unable to cope,” he says.
Internet connectivity is commonly impacted when load-shedding occurs too frequently for base station batteries to fully recharge between outages. Many operators’ services are also interrupted due to the theft of generators and batteries at their base stations. However, Comsol’s network suffered minimal impacts during the recent load-shedding – described as South Africa’s longest stretch of rolling blackouts ever.
Morgan explains that the network’s exceptional performance during outages is due to a number of factors: careful site selection, low-power and theft resilient infrastructure and proactive measures to assure ongoing power supplies during extended outages.
“Where possible, our high site base stations are built on buildings equipped with security and backup power. We thought about that strategically, paying top dollar to be on the buildings offering the best coverage and security, and negotiating a connection to their generators,” he says.
Mauritz Lewies, Chief Technical Officer, is credited with ensuring that each of Comsol’s nearly 440 sites requires as little power as possible. “The original plan was to ensure that every site could be autonomous for as long as possible in the event of an outage,” he says. “We aimed for 18-24 hours, so we designed our infrastructure with a low-power, small footprint. Initially, lead acid batteries were the de facto batteries to use, but we have started switching our fleet over to lithium-ion batteries, which last longer and recharge faster.”
Comsol has gone to great lengths to deter theft and vandalism, packing its power supplies in reinforced vaults, burying them in concrete and even resorting to the use of facades that appear as if the batteries have already been stolen, in some cases.
Morgan says: “Because we built our network cost-effectively, we were able to spend a bit more capex per site on power security.”
Despite having power autonomy of up to 24 hours, extended outages can become a challenge. Morgan notes that some areas may have no power for days or even weeks. “In the case of extended outages, we either put a mobile generator on site, or recycle recharged lithium-ion batteries daily. Either way requires manpower, but this is in line with our commitment to being responsive and guaranteeing quality of service,” Morgan says.
To make monitoring easier and enable field technicians to move quickly when power reserves are running low, Comsol has now developed its own Grafana app for simple network power management. Morgan says: “Our previous monitoring system wasn’t very user friendly for field workers who simply need to see the power status of the entire network: you had to keep going into the application to check what was going on. Our new dashboard gives us a simple visual overview of which sites are on Eskom, which are discharging, and which are down. We can proactively see if action needs to be taken and get someone to the site immediately before any interruption takes place.”
The forward-thinking design is expected to assure Comsol customers of uninterrupted connectivity – even through ongoing load-shedding. “When we get over stage six, everyone has a problem. But we’re confident that we can support uninterrupted connectivity through load-shedding up to stage six, even if we continue having outages for years to come,” says Morgan.
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