Leading telecom site power solution provider, Delta Electronics plans to set-up two new manufacturing facilities and second R&D centre in India. Sanjay Taneja, Director, Telecom, Power Division, Delta Electronics India in an interaction with TelecomTiger.

Q1) What kind of power solutions does Delta offer to the telecom industry?

Ans: Delta‘s., Network Power Division offers comprehensive and integrated power solutions for the passive telecom infrastructure space, designed around SMPS based technology rectifier modules and advanced microprocessor based controllers. Delta’s wide range of solutions include Rectifiers includes Outdoor Solution, Inverters and DC -DC Converter (embedded power), Site Monitoring and Control Systems, UPS systems, Batteries, and Renewable Energy solutions. The company'''s telecom power systems are widely used in wireless and fixed line environments and are applicable to Network Equipment, xDSL, Broadband Wireless (WLL and LMDS), Cellular/PCS, 3G, broadband, Wimax and optical Fiber applications. We provide end to end suite of power solutions for today’s telecom infrastructure be it in standalone or shared infrastructure in urban or rural India. These state-of-the-art-customised solutions are backed by a world-class service support, which is benchmarked with the best in the world. We also offer high quality display solution such as Videowalls for the mission critical 24x7x365 Telecom Network operating control rooms. We are only company in India to offer such a wide variety of reliable solutions for telecom vertical for the last several years.

All these factors have made us the leading vendor of telecom site power solutions in India & SAARC region.

Q2) How strong is Delta’s presence in the telecommunications landscape in India?

Ans: From powering the first BTS in the country in 1994 at Calcutta to installation base of over 175,000 systems throughout the country, Delta’s TPS division has come a long way. Today, it has a market share of over 65% in PVT telecom Market & about 30% share in PTT Telecom Market in the country with last year revenue of 111MUSD..It has all the major telecom service operators (Bharti, Idea, Tata, Reliance, Vodafone, BSNL, MTNL…) along with OEMs (NSN, Motorola, Ericsson, Huawei, ALU, ZTE…) as its satisfied customers. Aside, it is also a leading supplier of telecom power equipment to the major operators in Srilanka, Bangladesh and Nepal. This year revenue target for TPS division is about 126 MUSD.

Q3) The next phase of telecommunication revolution in India is expected to be from rural areas. But operators face a major challenge in setting up towers in these areas due to lack of consistent power supply. Do you have any specific product or solution to overcome this challenge?

Ans: The key challenges that any telecom operator faces in the rural market are primarily setting up passive infrastructure, power, accessibility etc. Passive infrastructure has been a critical area of operations for telecom companies in the past. According to estimates, passive infrastructure accounts for 60-70% of the total cost of setting up a wireless network. It has assumed the status of an independent industry during the past few years. Passive infrastructure includes the towers, shelters, cooling systems, AC and DC power supply, diesel generators, air conditioning, site leases, and other electrical and civil works in relation to a mobile telecoms network that enable a mobile operator to install the active infrastructure, such as base terminal station equipment, associated antennae, and backhaul connectivity to a mobile operators network at such telecoms sites.

We offer solutions at two levels; optimizing the power consumption at the BTS site and second offering renewable energy solutions. For the first level, Delta offers Enhanced power system control - Site Monitoring controlling system (SMCS). The SMCS is designed to be a compact integrated power feeding solution to the telecom base stations with innovative features such as a voltage stabilizer to achieve the best possible power system efficiency over a wide AC voltage range. Also included are an automatic transfer switch between AC utility and genset as well as a healthy phase selector which ensures full power capability in case of phase interruptions in the AC utility network. Moreover the unit has DG health check-up logic and a built-in AC distribution panel as well as an alarm panel for easy installation – all integrated into one compact system. For the second level, we offer hybrid energy solutions such solar with wind energy solution for the telecom application. Apart, from these, we have pan India coverage for after sales support which provides services support like I&C,  Acceptance Testing, Site Audits, Engineering solutions  as per customer needs.

Q4) When it comes to power solutions, operators also analyse the decision based on how environment friendly the solution is. Where do you rate your product on a scale of 1-10 for environment friendliness?

Ans: Not only this most of the products and solutions of the group are designed keeping in mind the energy efficiency in mind- most of Delta products offer 92% or better power efficiency. Apart from this, we offer our indigenous hybrid renewable solutions as a alternative clean energy solution as well. Our power solutions have found wide customer acceptance across brands, which proves that we have got thumbs up high rating with them and have been able to sustain ourselves successfully well over these years.

Environmental protection and energy conservation has been a long-standing mission at Delta. We have dedicated ourselves to improving the efficiency of our products, to developing alternative energy sources, and to educating our employees on putting the principles of green design into practice. Delta Group is the first company in the world to have first company-wide green map project. Green maps illustrate an area's green living resources and encourage participation in environmental sustainability. Delta's green map activities demonstrate the commitment of the company towards environmental protection and energy conservation.

All our products are environment friendly in the true sense.

Q5) Telecom operators or infrastructure companies complain that the currently available power solutions demand a heavy capex as well as recurring expenses. Your view points on the same.

Ans: Earlier the Opex and capex of operators was spirally due to large number of BTS sites outlay for telecom infrastructure and falling ARPUs due to falling user tariffs. Moreover, each component of the power solution was bought from a different vendor, therefore there were power losses and lesser power efficiencies at each component and product level But, Passive infrastructure sharing has brought about a change in the CAPEX/OPEX structure of the service providers. Moreover, companies like Delta are offering complete end to end solutions from design to installation of the complete set of power solutions, which helps in optimizing power consumption and reducing power costs drastically.  For example our latest integrated site management and control power solution. Delta SMCS solutions sports a user friendly LCD interface alongside unique protection features and genset fuel saving functionality by sensing battery voltage and shelter temperature. In addition to fuel savings, reduced operating hours of genset lead to longer intervals between maintenance. In short, all this means also longer overall lifetime of the genset. 

Its also includes automatic transfer switch between AC utility and genset as well as a healthy phase selector which ensures full power capability in case of phase interruptions in the AC utility network. Moreover the unit has DG health check-up logic and a built-in AC distribution panel as well as an alarm panel for easy installation – all integrated into one compact system.

As a company our mission is to provide innovative, clean and efficient energy solutions for a better tomorrow. And to achieve this is our corporate culture is of daring to change, and pursue sustainability.

Q6) Any new product which Delta is working on for the telecom industry?

Ans: Delta is continuously working on reducing the per watt size of the rectifier and increasing the power efficiency & density. We are also working aggressively on designing cost effective alternate energy solutions. This would be the state of the art Hybrid solution which can take input form 5 sources i.e. Utility, DG, Solar, Wind, Fuel cell & the controller can decide to work on healthy source of power automatically.

Q7) Do you have a manufacturing facility in India?

Ans: Yes, we have two manufacturing facilities, in Rudrapur and Puducherry. Our manufacturing plant at Rudrapur which will be first plant to receive the accreditation for GOLD certified LEEDS Green building design in India. We have currently India’s largest DC power systems manufacturing facility. From the year 2007 onwards, Delta is committed to adopt green building design for all new construction globally.

Q8) How strong is your R &D team?

Ans: Apart from the 44 R&D and engineering labs spread across the globe, Delta has a well established and state of the art R&D lab working dedicatedly on designing and developing customized & innovative power solutions for the Indian market. This helps us to reduce our go to market route and helps in quicker roll out of products. We have got the best talent pool, with large number of post graduate and PHDs from engineering stream. We have several patents on power conversion technology globally.

Delta is committed to further strengthen the Indian R&D centre by opening one more branch in southern part of India soon.

Q9) What are your investment plans for India?