MobileActive.org

Harnessing Off-Grid Power From Mobile Networks

Nearly 1.6 billion people in the world live without access to electricity. This is a quarter of all humanity. At the same time, off-grid power stations from mobile towers often produce excess energy.

A new initiative from the GSMA Development Fund in partnership with Lighting Africa, International Finance Corporation and World Bank, seeks to combine this lack of electricity with excess power from mobile stations. The resulting project is called the Community Power from Mobile (CPM) initiative.

The initiative will support and encourage mobile network operators and tower-sharing companies in developing countries to provide excess power generated by their base stations to local, off-grid communities. This power can then be used for anything from charging handsets and lanterns to powering local schools and clinics. Case studies already exist and the CPM initiative is setting out to test a business model for future deployments, said David Taverner, director for the Green Power for Mobile (GPM) program at the development fund.

MobileActive.org spoke with Taverner to learn more about the goals of the initiative.