200 Bladon Microturbine Generators for the Philippines
One Commerce, Bladon's exclusive Philippines partner, ordered 200 microturbine generators for off-grid telecoms towers across the islands.
One Commerce, Bladon's exclusive connectivity system integrator partner in the Philippines, placed an order for 200 Bladon microturbine generators (MTGs). The first unit under the order was installed at an off-grid tower near a residential area in Northern Luzon, marking the start of a rollout intended to bring cleaner, more reliable power to telecom sites across the archipelago.
A market built for off-grid power
The Philippines presents a demanding environment for telecoms infrastructure. The country has more than 27,000 towers supporting three mobile networks and seven active tower companies, spread across 7,107 islands and serving a population of around 100 million people. Many of these towers sit in locations where grid power is unstable or unavailable, leaving operators reliant on diesel generators that must be fuelled and maintained across dispersed and often difficult-to-reach sites.
Extreme weather compounds the problem. Typhoons and flooding regularly disrupt fuel deliveries, making diesel costly or, at times, simply impossible to access when it is needed most. For tower operators, this translates into network outages at precisely the moments when connectivity matters most to the communities they serve. It was against this backdrop that One Commerce and Bladon positioned the MTG as an alternative capable of running for longer between visits and on a wider range of fuels, reducing the operational risk created by supply disruption.
Reactivating dormant towers
One notable outcome of the deployment was the reactivation of towers that had previously been taken out of service because generator noise made them unsuitable for locations close to residential areas. By replacing diesel generators with a quieter power source, operators were able to bring these dormant sites back into use without the community impact that had led to their closure, restoring network coverage in areas that had gone without it.
“We are privileged to have such a great partner in One Commerce. We have been working with them for over a year to ensure all the right support teams and applications, marketing and promotional effort has been planned for mutual success.”
“Bladon's fuel-flexible approach, in being able to use low or no-carbon fuels, reducing travel for servicing and operating in a clean, quiet way to reduce the impact on nearby residents, is a perfect combination for our teams to deliver to many markets, not just telecoms in the Philippines. Furthermore, we have enabled our customers to reactivate once dormant telecom towers, that were too noisy and obtrusive to nearby residents. This is a true win-win for our customers and their subscribers, who benefit from better network coverage.”
The order followed more than a year of preparation between the two companies to establish the support teams, applications and promotional groundwork needed to bring the technology to market across the Philippines, and it represented one of the largest single commitments to Bladon's technology to date in the region.
This article is part of the Bladon archive and reflects the position at the date of publication.