The challenges faced by the telecom industry today are fierce tariff wars, a difficult power situation, hurdles in rural expansion and ever-increasing network operating expenditure. Power and fuel typically account for nearly 52 per cent of the total network operating cost. In rural areas, electrification is particularly inadequate. Although 80 per cent of the villages were electrified till March 2008, in practice, the frequent and long interruptions in electric supply bring a large number of villages at par with nonelectrified ones.
Goal to manage energy costs
This can be done by reducing the energy consumption, which will reduce the electricity bill. The reduction in fuel consumption further reduces the fuel bill.
Energy management solution
Energy costs can be managed by upgrading legacy sites, using passive cooling and minimising active cooling, remote monitoring and by using highly efficient products. This will lead to nearly 51 per cent saving.
Emerson, a $20.9 billion company with a manufacturing or sales presence in more than 150 countries, has products and capabilities that enable passive plus active cooling; solar and wind solutions; outside plant solutions; real-time monitoring; and other high efficiency products that have been tested and found to optimise energy cost savings.
Tuhin Mukherjee, Vice-President, Telecom Business, Emerson Network Power
The amount of energy consumed by the industry is sizeable. There are over 300,000 cell sites in India. About $800 is spent per cell site per month. Furthermore, about 80 per cent of cell sites run on expensive back-up power. All this translates into 10 per cent of the average revenue earned by an individual operator.
In a typical tower site expense breakup, energy constitutes 79 per cent of the total expenditure. Of this, 41 per cent goes towards the electricity bill and 38 per cent towards DG fuel.
Current approach
The industry is adopting a multi-pronged approach to efficiently manage energy costs. This approach involves smarter network (network sharing, cell optimisation and site optimisation) and smarter equipment (power saving base transceiver stations [BTSs], efficient amplifiers, external BTSs, NGN batteries, biofuels, wind and solar panels).
Smart operations
These smart systems, when combined with analytics, result in smart operations. A smart system is one that enhances productivity, improves utilisation of assets, maximises availability, minimises operating cost and optimises energy use. On the other hand, analytics comprises the following:
Analytics helps in increasing uptime and reducing operating costs, thus enhancing profits.
Change in approach
Standard reports consist of energy consumption, commercial power, DG sets, battery bank, air-conditioning, BTS and IDU operator-wise, diesel fuel consumption, daily/weekly/monthly run-time of DG set/electricity board (EB), routine operations and maintenance and critical, major and minor alarms.
Performance or comparison reports comprise DG run-time versus fuel consumption, overall energy consumption/ efficiency, EB + DG + battery bank, comparison of energy consumption between two towers and cluster/region-wise summary reports.
In contrast, advanced analytics reports consist of active energy monitoring and analytics; energy management by equipment (BTSs, DG sets, battery banks, air conditioners); fuel management (consumption analysis and demand forecasting); clustering and fault incidence analytics; what-if analysis using predictor value setting (make, age, environmental conditions); Pareto of defects; MTBF/MTTR calculations; and control charts (temperature, voltage, current, fuel consumption).
All this will help in plugging revenue loss by reducing equipment-down scenarios and enhancing SLA performance. On the opex front too, there can be a saving of up to 10 to 15 per cent.
Vivek Khemani, Head, Strategy and Finance, ConnectM
