Unattended sites are where diesel logistics hurt most: theft, refuelling trips and a generator nobody hears fail. Solar with a long-life battery and remote monitoring is now the default for new towers; the same design serves small data and telemetry sites.
Key facts
- Tower loads are steady, 1–5 kW: a small array and a battery cycled every night.
- Daily cycling makes cycle life the deciding spec — 15,000-cycle graphene LFP outlasts the contract.
- Remote monitoring flags a failing rectifier or a tampered cabinet before the site drops.
- Clusters of towers can sit under one Energy-as-a-Service contract with one monitoring dashboard.
Design for unattended duty
No moving parts on site is the goal: solar, sealed LFP cabinet, DC bus, and gas backup only where cloud cover demands it. Anti-theft cabinets and tilt alarms are standard. Everything is visible from a dashboard in head office.
Why cycle life is the spec
A tower battery cycles once every night, 365 times a year. Over an 8-year contract that is nearly 3,000 full cycles in a hot cabinet — beyond lead-acid and at the edge of cheap lithium. Graphene LFP rated to 15,000 cycles does the whole term on one set.
Contracting
Tower companies and ISPs earning hard currency or with strong balance sheets can bring clusters under one service contract with a fee per site; the operator drops diesel and refuelling from its cost base entirely.
Operate towers or edge sites? Ask for the cluster proposal.
Talk to Frontières BayFrequently asked
Can you retrofit existing diesel towers?
Yes — the generator stays as backup and typically stops running within a month.
Minimum cluster size?
Enough sites to reach roughly US$1M of equipment for local-currency operators; dollar-earning operators from smaller clusters.