100% PV-powered Rural Sites Bridge the Digital Divide in Malaysia

Mobile communications networks in densely populated areas are typically well developed, whereas network coverage in rural or sparsely populated areas takes significant time to develop, which results in a digital divide.

As part of the 12^th Malaysia Plan (2021-2025), the Jalinan Digital Negara (JENDELA) initiative was launched to promote the development of digital communications and enhance network coverage, helping bridge the digital divide in remote areas.As a participant of the plan, REDtone needs to build telecom sites in area of the Rajang River, the longest river in Sarawak, Malaysia, with many villages scattered along its banks, where villagers still have a traditional lifestyle and network coverage is required to help them communicate with the outside world.

Most of these sites are off-grid and powered by gensets, which requires two manual site visits per month, increasing energy and O&M costs. In addition, Malaysia is located close to the equator, which is hot and rainy all year round. The dirt roads in remote areas are often waterlogged or collapse after severe rainstorms. The refueling and maintenance are burdensome and may not be timely. Those factors affect the stable operation of the sites and the end-user network experience. The power supply reliability of the off-grid sites needs to be improved.

Against this backdrop, REDtone adopts Huawei iSolar solution to build 100% PV-powered rural sites. The new solution enables sites to reduce the use of gensets and manual O&M, improves the reliability of site power supply, and achieves the following results:

• 100% clean energy: The solar-storage synergy algorithm is used to facilitate dynamic battery charge and discharge based on the power generation of PV modules and power consumption of loads. Surplus power is stored in intelligent lithium batteries without any waste. Solar energy has become the main power supply of sites. Sites with sufficient irradiance can achieve 100% PV power supply and zero carbon emission.

• Lower energy costs: Gensets are replaced with PV modules at sites to reduce energy costs by more than 90% on average.

• Reliable power supply: The uptime of site power systems reaches 99.5% of the total runtime, greatly improving the reliability.

• “0” manual site visit: Real-time running status of site power systems, PV modules, and batteries is displayed on the NetEco, an intelligent management platform. Manual site visit is replaced with remote O&M, and passive response is replaced with active O&M, significantly improving the project operation.

Today, 100% PV-powered sites on the banks of the Rajang River are integral to the rural network in Malaysia, enabling people living in this area to integrate into a modern lifestyle smoothly. Huawei has joined hands with Malaysia REDtone to deliver green connections for sites for a more interconnected world.