Wind to power MTC reception

MTC, Namibia’s biggest cellphone operator, has resorted to wind power to give its reception a boost.

Apart from the wind turbine at Sossusvlei Mountain, the company inaugurated a wind generation project at Erindi Mountain on Friday.Although MTC has a number of base transmitter stations which are powered only by solar energy, Erindi has now become ‘the first solar/wind solution fully installed by MTC’.The company’s corporate communications officer, Abelene Heuer, said because there is less sunlight available during the rainy season, power outages are experienced on some of their sites. As a result, it was decided to erect towers which are powered by wind. Heuer said: ‘To prevent these failures, MTC investigated the option of adding a wind generator to the solar system to have a stable power supply all year round.’Wind generators are bought, installed and commissioned at a cost of N$230 000.Also on the cards is a wind turbine for the base transmitter station at Mile 108, Heuer said.The turbine launched at Erindi on Friday is said to provide cellphone reception covering a radius of about 40 km. Heuer said: ‘The immediate benefit for MTC is an increase in ‘up time’, and that means less failures and therefore an improved service to our customers. In future, MTC could feed excess power generated by these systems back into the national power grid.’