The radios would go down and the network would shut down. What would happen in the event of a national black-out for over twelve hours? Additional input costs and revenue losses amount to tens of millions of Rands. Vodacom spends significant amounts on backup power solutions such as diesel generators and batteries to maintain power to our sites. What are the cost implications of load shedding for Vodacom? With infrequent outages, a battery can last for five years, but with frequent outages due to load shedding this will reduce to one year or two years. What impact does load shedding have on batteries in cell phone towers?īatteries have a limited number of charge / deplete cycles, which means the more often they are called on to work, the shorter their lifespan. If the grid outage is, for example, ten hours then you’ll have the sites failing from the worst battery life cycle of say two hours to about eight hours maximum. One might fail after two hours, one might fail after four hours or eight hours. All five sites will not go down simultaneously. When there is a black-out, and they all have battery back-up, they can keep going for a period of time of between four and eight hours, depending on how healthy the batteries still are. For example, Sandton may not have any power, while Rosebank may remain unaffected.Īs an example, let’s say there are five sites servicing a particular area. This is purely a function of the load shedding schedule, and the areas impacted. If the outage lasts long enough for batteries to drain, some areas can be completely blacked out, and others not impacted at all. It is when the period of load shedding exceeds one typical battery charge / deplete cycle that a tower goes off line, and with it, connectivity in that cell coverage area. It depends on how long the back-up power lasts, as the vast majority of our towers have battery or generator back-up power. It is also worth noting that the network service quality will start degrading if more people connect to the sites which are still up – in other words, the number of mobile subscribers would stay the same, but the number of serving sites would be reduced.Īre some Vodacom coverage areas virtually blacked out during load shedding and others not at all? Naturally if both the primary and neighbouring secondary cells are powerless, there is no signal at all. In this instance, as the customer is on the edge of that cell, network service deteriorates and can result in intermittent service. Typically with load shedding, if your nearest cellphone tower with the strongest signal (your primary cell) goes down, you could then be connected through 'signal spillage' from a secondary cell. How does this affect the customer and why would they experience intermittent service? Batteries, on the other hand, will last anywhere from four to eight hours before they will need electricity to recharge. Generators run on diesel, which means they can continue to run while being refuelled. Once power is fully depleted, the tower stops working entirely and, depending on the configuration of nearby towers, may cause a coverage area to black out entirely or for customers to experience intermittent service. When load shedding occurs, a cellphone tower remains fully functional for as long as the batteries last or the back-up generator keeps running. What happens to a cellphone tower during load shedding?
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