Interrupted services due to power outages are history for Türk Telekom's customers in Istanbul. Since July 2011, three emergency power gensets from MTU Onsite Energy have been in place for household telephone and internet use as well as that of banks, education authorities, the police and other security services.
Turkey's economy is growing and, with it, the country's energy demand. Not all national power networks are equipped to cope with such rapid developments. This is why many private Turkish companies rely on MTU Onsite Energy to provide continuous power based on gas engines and emergency power generated by diesel units. The company has already installed systems producing 150MW of power in Turkey and 76 units were added in 2013 alone.
The Turkish Electricity Transmission Company estimates that the annual rise in electricity demand between 2009 and 2023 is likely to be around 6%. In 2012, 57,000MW of the power target of 125,000MW were installed. The power supply challenge is most acute in Istanbul, where a fifth of the nation's population are located.
Because a large number of these businesses and residents use telephone, television and internet services provided by Türk Telekom, the consequences of a loss of systems data for these customers could be devastating.
So in order to update systems and cater for the increasing energy demand, the company replaced the existing emergency power gensets at its Istanbul headquarters. Since July 2011, three Type DS 2595 D5S emergency gensets from MTU, powered by three MTU Type 16V 4000 G63 diesel engines, have been producing 5,190kVA of electric power.
Following a market demand analysis of the Turkish communications network, Türk Telecom chose Istanbul-based MTU to completely equip its 144m2 underground facility. MTU supplied everything from gensets to switch cabinets and electrical plants.
Prior to installation, MTU subjected these units to comprehensive and thorough tests involving simulated load imposition using the company's highly modern test stands at its headquarters in Friedrichshafen. Ali Aydin, senior energy manager at Türk Telekom, has confidence in the emergency supply units made in Germany.
"They have been running without any sort of problem at all, right up to the present," he says. "I can recommend the gensets and the fast and thorough implementation of the project without hesitation."
One of MTU's special services is to ensure that the manager receives an SMS as soon as a power outage occurs and the gensets have started up. The gensets run in parallel and each can serve as a back-up for the other. Their high torque means the engines have rapid and high load imposition capability and can achieve operating status, stable voltage and frequency, within nine seconds. Load can be imposed from this point on.
Türk Telekom's central facility, from which 33% of Turkey's internet volume emanates, needs around 2,200kVA of energy an hour. The station is Türk Telekom's third biggest in the country and the company has atotal of around 5,000 individual stations, which are gradually allowing it to adapt to the ever expanding telecommunications scene - using more powerful emergency gensets.
Türk Telekom's use of emergency power technology from MTU is not limited to Istanbul. Erzurum in the east of the country has been supplied with the company's diesel gensets, running on Series 2000 engines.
MTU Onsite Energy is the brand name under which the Tognum Group markets distributed power generation systems. The product range encompasses standardised and customised diesel generator sets for emergency stand-by, base and peak load applications based on diesel engines rated up to 3,250kW as well as compact cogeneration modules powered by gas engines with up to 2,150kW or gas turbines up to 45,000kW for the generation of heat and power.
