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Intelligent Energy hails 'transformational' £1.2bn India fuel cell deal
UK company to provide power to 26,500 mobile masts in India through Essential Energy subsidiary
By Will Nichols | 02 Oct 2015
Intelligent Energy's £1.2bn deal this week to power thousands of phone masts in India will prove "transformational" for the company and the fuel cell industry as a whole, according to chief executive Henri Winand.
The UK-based company has entered into a long term contract to supply power to more than 27,400 phone masts, marking a major step up from the two smaller deals it signed with Microqual and Ascend Telecom Infrastructure (ATL) last year.
The deal will see Intelligent Energy switch out expensive and polluting diesel engines that are required to power the masts in the absence of reliable grid electricity with clean running fuel cells, selling the power through its wholly owned subsidiary Essential Energy.
Supporting phone masts is particularly important in emerging economies, where large amounts of financial transactions are conducted through smart phones and losing signal when the power goes can mean losing business.
Winand expects the deal will "prime the pump" for licensing the technology, which he insists can drive emissions and cost savings when deployed at volume. Ultimately, it could provide a solution for a large proportion of India's more than 425,000 mobile phone masts.
"The further you get away from the grid, the more the cost of power goes up - that's where you can introduce new technologies," Winand says. "India has a huge gap between grid availability and reliability and what people really need. On average cell towers [in India] are without power for eight hours so you need diesels chugging along. That's a lot of energy off-grid where the customer today pays 10 times more than grid price."
Intelligent Energy has been playing the long-game in India, first deploying fuel cells in the country 2011 before picking up the deals with Microqual and ATL. The company now has around 400MW under contract, when in January last year it had nothing.
There have been mishaps along the way, of course - window-sized filters from the fuel cells were whisked away to act as mosquito guards in windows, while the local wildlife has also proved a challenge. "We learned to put bollards around the cabinets after we had an incident where a camel-drawn carriage reversed at great speed into one of our fuel cells," Winand says. "Amazingly enough, the fuel cell was at an angle but still working."
The company has also looked at other opportunities to embed itself in communities, teaming up with Welsh company Hydro Industries to power water purification technology using excess electricity generated by its cell mast fuel cells. Around 720 million of India's 1.25 billion population lack access to clean drinking water, according to some estimates, while UNICEF says around 100,000 people die of water-related illnesses each year, with waterborne diseases costing the Indian economy $600m in lost production and medical treatment.
Providing reliable power to support businesses dependent on mobile phones alongside clean water has had a "phenomenal" reception in India, Winand says.
Targeting such a huge market has also allowed for economies of scale that helped it reduce the cost of its fuel cells. The same scalable technology has been turned into a charging solution personal and supplied to vehicle manufacturers.
Winand sees both applications as an extension of the increasing distribution of energy - all of us want to take our phones and vehicles with us without being tied to a grid connection. Convenience is key, he argues, we could all drink from a tap but still shell out more than petrol for bottled water.
Intelligent Energy's Upp charger, originally targeted at the African market but launched in the UK last year, is squarely aimed at the convenience market. It provides a week of power for any USB device through reusable cartridges. A slightly smaller Upp 2 is in the pipeline and Winand has his sights on bypassing the needs for cords altogether and putting fuel cells inside phones and laptops - potentially as soon as the end of next year. The company has also purchased a disposable, but fully recyclable, fuel cartridge from the maker of Bic biros.
In 2010, Intelligent Energy and Suzuki debuted a fuel-cell powered scooter. Two of these were picked up in the last 12 months, during which the company's revenue rose from £3.5m to £27.4m and it completed a £55m IPO. This year, Toyota will bring its Mirai fuel-cell powered sedan to UK shores, while Hyundai's ix35 fuel cell is already available. But without supporting infrastructure, can these cars make any impact on the market?
"In eight years, we had contracts with two car manufacturers, then in 10 months an extra two," Winand says. "What is that telling you?"
With car manufacturers on board, mobile applications in the pipeline and a "transformational" contract to provide stationary power across the subcontinent, Intelligent Energy is demonstrating that hydrogen power is finally here to stay.