Vodacom has long said it aims to cut its carbon emissions drastically, which it planned to drive mostly through the deployment of solar sites to power its infrastructure and buildings. Now, Vodacom has deployed three more solar-powered facilities that cost the telecommunications company around R8 million, in Bloemfontein, Polokwane and Vereeniging.
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The mobile operator started outfitting its major office buildings with solar power generation capabilities several years ago, including its Century City site back in 2012, and is planning to roll it out to us many of its signal infrastructure sites as possible. In May 2020, Vodacom installed similar solar capabilities at a base station controller in Randburg.
“Collectively, the three new sites will generate about 127MWh of energy annually, which will help to reduce our carbon emissions and lower electricity consumption,” Vodacom said in a statement. “The solar panels will also ease the load on the sites’ batteries in the event of load shedding. We have made progress in our waste and water reduction strategies. However, energy consumption remains our largest environmental impact, requiring significant investment in order to reach the targets that we have set out to achieve.”
Vodacom has made a commitment to reduce its carbon emissions by half by the year 2025, which it aligned to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. It stated that it had saved about 12GWh of electricity with this energy management strategy. All of this saving didn’t come directly from using renewable energy sources, but also through investing in projects aimed at increasing its energy efficiency.
The three new solar sites will generate about 127MWh of energy on an annual basis. The company has been dealing with a lot of battery theft in South Africa amidst the continuing rolling blackouts faced by the country. It hopes the investments it is making will take more pressure off the grid, but more importantly help it protect its assets.
