Electrical Solutions for Telecom

A load that never stops

Telecom infrastructure in Kenya is a continuous load with very little tolerance for interruption. Base station sites, fibre points of presence, switching centres and data centres run around the clock, and the equipment they house is dominated by rectifier and power systems that convert the incoming AC supply into the DC that radios and transmission gear use, together with cooling that runs for most of the day in warmer parts of the country.

Compared with a factory the current drawn is modest, but the availability requirement is far higher and the sites are numerous and scattered. That combination pushes design towards standardised, repeatable AC distribution boards that can be built to one specification, deployed across many sites and maintained by technicians who meet the same layout everywhere they go.

Unmanned sites, generators and hybrid supply

Most sites are unmanned and many sit well away from a firm feed. Where KPLC supply is present, an automatic transfer switch panel handles changeover to the standby generator without anyone attending, and a manual transfer panel is added where the operator wants a controlled bypass for maintenance. Where solar forms part of the site energy mix, DC combiner boards gather the array strings and AC combiner boards tie the inverter output into the site distribution board, with protection and isolation at each stage so that a fault on one string does not take the site off air.

Feeder pillar panels are used where power has to be distributed outdoors to several cabinets or masts on one compound, and meter boards keep landlord and tenant metering separate where a tower or exchange is shared between operators. The low-voltage assemblies most often specified for this sector include:

• AC distribution boards feeding rectifiers, cooling and site services
• ATS and MTS transfer panels for generator changeover at attended and unattended sites
• Solar AC and DC combiner boards for hybrid and off-grid sites
• Feeder pillar panels for outdoor distribution around a compound or campus
• Data centre panels and meter boards for switching centres and colocation rooms

Metering, power quality and remote visibility

Because nobody is on site, the board itself has to report. Metering instruments and current transformers built into the distribution board give current, voltage and energy readings feeder by feeder, and smart components allow those readings and alarms to be collected remotely rather than discovered on the next site visit.

Power quality deserves attention too. Rectifiers, drives and switch-mode loads distort the current waveform, and the reactive component on a commercial tariff attracts a power factor penalty where the recorded figure falls below the level the tariff sets. Automatic power factor correction panels are worth fitting at the larger exchanges, data centres and hub sites where the billed demand justifies them.

Standards, build quality and regional rollout

Panels are built to IEC 61439-1 and IEC 61439-2 under an ISO 9001 quality system, using MCBs, MCCBs, ACBs and relays from Schneider Electric, ABB and Siemens. EPRA regulation covers the licensed installation work and KEBS certification applies to equipment brought into the country. Enclosure and ingress protection are chosen for the site, since an outdoor cabinet at a rural mast and an air-conditioned equipment room are very different duties.

For a rollout, repeatability is the whole point. Panel Tech Systems manufactures in Nairobi and serves Kenya and the wider East African region, including Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and South Sudan, so a standard site board can be replicated and commissioned to the same specification right across a regional network.