Clean Backup Power for Californian Cell Towers
In an environment of severe weather, wildfires and power outages, who will take responsibility for clean backup power for cell towers?
An AP news bulletin advises us that the California legislature is submitting a bill to force telecommunication companies to maintain at least 72 hours of backup power for all cellphone towers in high-risk fire areas. Assumedly telecom service providers would have to finance the backup power, although the bill doesn’t stop the companies from passing the costs on to their customers.
The bill, sponsored by California State Senator Mike McGuire, has come about following numerous complaints of cell service downtime during the planned shutdowns carried out by California utility companies in response to increasingly frequent and destructive wildfires. A report from the California Public Utilities Commission found 85,000 wireless customers and 160,000 wired customers lost service during the 2017 North Bay fires. Most recently, data from the Federal Communications Commission shows that during the Kincade fire in October 2019, 27% of Sonoma County’s wireless cell sites including 874 cellphone towers were offline, affecting millions of people. Senator McGuire indicated that the cell service is critical for preventing emergencies.
Similar to an attempt by the Federal government to legislate mandatory backup power after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the telecom industry opposes this legislation. AT&T and Verizon informed the legislators that during the widespread power outages, only 3% of cell towers in the affected region were offline during the power shutoffs. Moreover, overlapping coverage areas and temporary towers enabled continued cell service in many locations.
The news bulletin indicated that AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon made statements that they are committed to providing resilient services for public safety agencies and organizations; to this end their policies stipulate provision of on-site backup power of between 48 – 72 hours for major telecommunication hubs. Backup power is a key component of these reliable emergency services. In an L.A. Times news report on the topic, AT&T spokesman Steven Maviglio indicated that the company is experienced in managing large-scale outages. “Today, we are investing hundreds of millions of dollars in our network resiliency to address these new challenges and will continue to work to ensure our customers have the connectivity they need,” commented Maviglio.
AT&T and other providers regularly invest in equipment and services of different types to ensure that their critical networks remain operational, including a variety of portable generators. However, they have difficulties positioning mobile generators where needed and keeping them fueled when they receive notifications about blackouts only two hours in advance. Moreover, according to Mark Ghilarducci, director of the Office of Emergency Services, when telecommunications providers commissioned additional emergency generators from outside of California in response to the announcement of impending power shutoffs last Autumn, the deliveries were stopped at the state border because the generators did not comply with California state emission standards.
California lawmakers are faced with several priorities – protecting citizens during emergencies, protecting businesses from having to shoulder the burden for circumstances for which they have no control, as well as protecting the environment from the harmful emissions prevalent of mobile generators. In a world faced by climate crisis, the energy sector is focused on introducing innovative alternative energy technologies. Suffering droughts and wildfires as well as earthquakes, California is especially aware of the impact of weather and climate on the environment and has become a world leader in the transition to sustainable energy solutions. Faced with power outages that raised the immediate, emergency need for resilient backup power for cell towers, communication hubs and other critical equipment, telecom providers responded by ordering portable generators. This short-term emergency goal deviated the decision-makers from their long-term commitment to cleaner, greener alternatives. Looking forward – knowing that planned shutdowns and power outages are likely to be a more common occurrence – telecom providers, legislators and utility professionals would do well to come together to define and deploy long-term policies provisioning for resilient, emission-free backup power sources that will protect Californian people and cell towers while ensuring a continued transition to sustainable energy.
