@fibresystemsmag |
www.fibre-systems.com
FEATURE ENVIRONMENT
The communications industry is looking to stabilise its energy consumption in the face of exponential traffic growth and adopt renewable energy Madrid-headquartered telecom provider
Telefónica plans to halve its energy consumption per bit of traffic between 2016 and 2020. Part of this programme is also centred on equipment substitution, says Maya Ormazabal, the company’s environmental and climate change manager. She adds the resulting network transformation in the company’s fixed-line business reduces energy consumption by concentrating its operations into fewer buildings, allowing it to exit older sites. Tat’s significant because the firm’s fixed-line business switch sites account for 35 per cent of its energy consumption. ‘Telefónica in Spain is an example,’ Ormazabal
said. ‘Telefónica is switching off fixed-line buildings, because we are aggregating and concentrating. Fibre was always expected to consume more power, but it’s not because we are disconnecting old copper-based technologies.’ Te company is also installing power-saving features, adds Geert Paemen, Telefónica’s director of sustainability and intangibles management. ‘If there’s not a lot of traffic, we can put sites on standby,’ she explained.
Free and cool With air conditioning ‘very relevant in terms of our service and energy consumption’ according
to Ormazabal, Télefonica adopts ‘free cooling’ wherever possible, in every country it operates in. Among many options available, opening up facilities to allow cool air flow is perhaps the simplest. Fans can also drive air flow that cools water used in chillers to regulate humidity and temperature in switch rooms. ‘We use free cooling mainly in base stations for our mobile
We see an exponential data increase leading to more energy consumption
networks – we have thousands, and the investment gives a really good return,’ Ormazabal says. Mobile network base stations account for 41 per cent of Telefónica’s energy consumption, and cooling them had previously been around a quarter of that. From 2010 to 2016 Télefonica conducted 257
climate-aware initiatives including equipment substitution, power saving features and free cooling, saving it 492GWh, and €64 million in
electricity says Paemen. ‘We avoided emissions equivalent to more than 142,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide,’ she added. Andrew Lord, head of optical networks R&D
for BT’s Technology, Service and Operations division in Ipswich, UK, highlights that network evolution must also consider energy used in manufacturing equipment. ‘It is rarely a good idea to replace or update too frequently because, whilst we would reduce energy costs, the overall impact on the planet would be negative,’ he noted. ‘I cannot stress enough the importance of understanding full, end-to-end, whole lifetime impacts before making conclusions about the best approach for reducing global energy use or carbon footprint!’ Nevertheless, BT too reduced energy
consumption while growing traffic 40 per cent annually by replacing equipment. It has done this over the last seven years while deploying fibre to the cabinet (FTTC), which now covers more than 90 per cent of the UK. Lord claims that this technology has the lowest end-to-end energy and carbon footprint compared to commercially available alternatives such as fibre to the premises (FTTP). ‘Tis is a result of differences in energy consumed in the home by FTTC and FTTP modem/hubs,’ Lord explained. Energy consumption is proportional to data rate, making
Issue 15 • Spring 2017 FIBRE SYSTEMS 21
Johnnie Pakington via Flickr Creative Commons CC BY 2.0 licence
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40
