BOS Digitalfunk Brandenburg chooses Heliocentris

Heliocentris, a leader in solutions and services for distributed power and telent, provider of network solutions, systems and services for operational and safety-related communication, will team up to upgrade 25 digital radio base stations owned by the state of Brandenburg with state-of-the-art emergency power supply. The project uses environmentally friendly fuel cells instead of diesel generators and will be completed within the next 6 months. It will be worth close to EUR 1 Mio in revenues for Heliocentris.

The BOS digital radio network for authorities and organisations with security tasks is classified as mission-critical infrastructure and as such subject to the highest security requirements. It has to function reliably for police forces and fire departments especially in catastrophic events and major emergency situation and is therefore highly dependent on reliable power supply.

For emergency power systems, diesel generators have long been the power source of choice in order to secure long backup times. Thanks to significant cost reductions in recent years, fuel cell technology has become an economically viable and environmentally attractive alternative, reducing both operating costs and carbon-footprint. In the proposed solution for BOS Digitalfunk, Heliocentris' flagship product “Energy Manager” will act as the “brain” to ensure continuous monitoring and reliability of the system.

For Heliocentris, this project-win marks a first important step into the market for emergency power systems in “on-grid” locations such as Germany or Europe in general. Major projects that the company has been focussing on so far primarily targeted customers in “off-grid” locations, such as mobile telecom companies operating base stations in geographic regions with poor and unreliable grid-coverage, e.g. the Middle East and South-East-Asia.

"20 years of in-depth knowledge and experience in fuel cell technology make us the ideal partner for complex solutions involving the most extreme security and reliability requirements," Ayad Abul-Ella, CEO Heliocentris Energy Solutions AG, explains. "Moreover, the integration of our modular and flexible Energy Management System will ensure maximum transparency of the emergency power system, thereby guaranteeing smooth and uninterrupted operation of the sites."

The Heliocentris/telent-solution represents a truly innovative approach in several ways: both the fuel cell as well as the hydrogen units are integrated into one container. They require very little maintenance, thereby reducing service calls and costs significantly. The solution is designed to allow for easy installation, thereby also reducing initial setup costs. The Heliocentris Energy Manager, enabling the remote monitoring of the system, continuously provides the operator with actual values of all system parameters.

"The use of fuel cell systems is an efficient alternative to the conventional emergency power supply from high-emission diesel generators," Robert Blum, CEO of telent GmbH, explains. "We will continue to strengthen our commitment in fuel cell technology to offer our customers this pioneering technology in an even more powerful portfolio and hereby hope to also open up additional market segments", Robert Blum continued.

"We are convinced that the use of alternative technologies in comparison to conventional and maintenance-intensive diesel generators will prevail as an emergency power supply in the BOS field. We hereby also open up access to grid-connected base stations. The potential for the conversion of additional sites is large. According to information from NOW GmbH (National Organisation for Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technology), which accompanies this project, there are 4,500 base stations in Germany alone. We are very pleased that we can now demonstrate our expertise in this field also in Germany more often," Dr. Henrik Colell, CTO Heliocentris Energy Solutions AG, said.

Currently eight further European countries besides Germany are setting up nationwide TETRA networks. Fourteen European countries already have such a network.