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CMCC "Green Action"--Saves Energy, Saves money (PDF-619k)

Huawei Solution for the Green Project of Qinghai Mobile

The Necessity of Energy Conservation and Emission Reduction in China

The sustainable development of the environment is a challenging issue facing China and the world. At present, the economic growth mode with high energy consumption and the unreasonable industrial structure have resulted in severe pollution to the environment in China. Energy and environmental issues are posing an increasing threat to Chinese economic growth and the sustainable development of the Chinese economy. Therefore, the Chinese government pledges to spare no efforts to tackle the problems and make substantial progress in energy conservation and emission reduction. The Outline of the Eleventh Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development of the People' s Republic of China sets energy conservation and environmental protection as a fundamental national policy. The Outline also puts forward the goal of building a resource-conserving and environmental-friendly society and sets a more specific target for reducing energy consumption and emissions per unit of GDP by 20% by 2010 compared with 2005.

China Mobile and its "Green Action"

The telecommunications industry in China is growing rapidly. As the largest mobile telecommunications operator in China, China Mobile has established a mobile telecommunications network featuring extensive coverage, high quality, diverse services and first-class customer service. China Mobile provides telecommunication services for about 350 million subscribers and manages to maintain a 70% market share and a 20% growth rate.

China Mobile proactively assumes its corporate social responsibility (CSR), which pushes it towards excellence. Adhering to its core value of "Responsibility Makes Perfection", China Mobile proposes its CSR vision, which demonstrates its commitment to the fulfillment of its triple-sided responsibilities: its economic responsibility, social responsibility and environmental responsibility with perfect sincerity and integrity, specifying its CSR strategy accordingly.

Adhering to its environmental philosophy of "utilizing resources to the best of their properties", China Mobile determined energy conservation and emission reduction as the focus of its environmental responsibility and initiated the "Green Action Plan" in the mobile telecommunications industry in China in 2007. Since then, China Mobile has been making practical efforts to achieve the national goals for energy conservation and emission reduction, alleviate global climate change and realize the harmonious development of Enterprise and Nature.

China Mobile sets for itself a goal for energy conservation and emission reduction that is higher than the national goal of reducing energy consumption per unit of GDP by 20% by 2010. In the "Green Action Plan", China Mobile pledges to reduce electricity consumption per unit of telecommunications traffic by 40% by 2010 compared with 2005. That is, approximately eight billion kWh of electricity will be saved in comparison with 2005 level. This amount of electricity will reduce the discharge of 6.8 million tons of carbon dioxide, which is equivalent to the consumption of 2.7 million tons of standard coal or the total amount of carbon dioxide discharged by 1.7 million vehicles in a year.

Huawei, a Leader in the Green Era

As an important participant in the telecommunications industry worldwide, Huawei shows the courage to undertake its social responsibilities. Huawei keeps communicating with the world leading telecommunications operators such as China Mobile, Vodafone, France Telecom, Deutsche Telekom and Telecom Italia for ideas about energy conservation and emission reduction. Huawei also maintains close cooperation with the upstream and downstream enterprises of the industrial chains. All of these enable Huawei to take the lead in the green era of the telecommunications industry.

The construction of a mobile network is a complicated systematic project involving more than just equipment installation. In January 2008, Huawei released a comprehensive solution for the new generation green mobile network. By using innovative technologies such as the highly-efficient power amplifier, multi-carrier, distributed mode, intelligent temperature control and flexible site scenario model, this solution helps operators to reduce power consumption, material utilization, room occupancy and manpower. In addition, this solution can reduce the discharge of carbon dioxide by more than 60% and the total operation cost by 30%, helping operators to achieve the goals of environmental protection and economic benefits. This solution has the following features:

1. The use of new technologies in the main equipment (or the base transceiver station, BTS) and the introduction of distributed BTS make it possible to achieve lower power consumption, more flexible deployment and smoother evolution. The equipment can support multiple modes through software upgrade. This can maximize the reusability of hardware components and reduce the long-term investment by operators.

2. For equipment rooms, the applications of intelligent ventilation, straight ventilation and natural heat dissipation can help to reduce the use of air conditioners for heat dissipation, thus achieving lower energy consumption.

3. New energy sources such as solar energy, wind energy and methane are used to power the BTSs to reduce the discharge of carbon dioxide. In November 2007, in support of the Olympic Torch Relay, Huawei and China Mobile jointly deployed a mobile network on Mount Qomolangma, where some of the BTSs are powered by solar energy. This well demonstrates the idea of "Green Olympics".

In December 2007, Huawei signed a strategic cooperation agreement on the "Green Action Plan" with China Mobile, becoming one of the four equipment suppliers that maintain strategic partnerships with China Mobile in terms of energy conservation and emission reduction. The signing of this agreement marks the commencement of closer cooperation between Huawei and China Mobile in environmental protection, energy conservation and emission reduction.

Huawei Pioneering the Green Project of Qinghai Mobile

In the Green Project of Qinghai Mobile, guided by advanced environmental protection philosophies, Huawei manages to construct real green BTSs by using its latest environmental-friendly technologies. By reducing energy consumption in environmental- friendly ways, Huawei achieves the goals of economic benefits and environment protection for the operator at the same time.

Analysis of Energy Consumption

As the network keeps expanding and more and more telecommunications equipment is used in the network, the demands for energies like electricity are increasing accordingly to ensure the continuous running of the equipment. It is reported that electricity consumption accounts for a large proportion of energy consumption for telecommunications operators. Therefore, China Mobile focuses its attention on saving electricity in terms of energy conservation and emission reduction and makes efforts to reduce room occupancy and material utilization at the same time.

Reducing network energy consumption is, in essence, to reduce the amount of energies consumed by each station of the network. To better understand the composition of energies consumed by the sites, Huawei conducts a comprehensive analysis of the costs of the sites. The results are shown in the following figure. The figure shows that electricity fees account for 23% of the total costs of the sites. The main equipment consumes 51% of electricity and air conditioners consume 46% of electricity. Therefore, Huawei determines to make efforts to reduce energy consumption of the main equipment and the air conditioners at the same time. 

Reducing Energy Consumed by the Main Equipment

The main equipment must be running continuously to ensure communication continuity on the network. How does Huawei manage to reduce energy consumption of the main equipment in the Green Project of Qinghai Mobile?

The answer is to use the latest Huawei green BTS products. Using advanced products and technologies can greatly reduce the energy consumed by the main equipment.

Green BTS

Reducing Auxiliary Equipment

Huawei green BTS single module adopts the multi density and radio frequency broadband technologies and provides four to six channels on one common interface. These channels share the same set of antenna and feeder and there is no need to use expensive external combiners. Compared with the BTS of the same capacity, the green BTS is smaller and lighter and has lower requirements on auxiliary equipment such as backup power supply. For an S12/12/12 station, only one to two battery cabinets are required for backup power supply. The green BTS and the battery cabinets occupy an area of only 0.5 m2. This makes the site acquisition more convenient and flexible, saves one-time investment and shortens the period from network planning to commercial use.

Reducing Power Consumption

Huawei green BTS adopts the enhanced Doherty technology, the latest power amplifier chipset, and the brand new hardware design to help operators to reduce power consumption through a three-layer approach.

Firstly, the latest power amplifier chipset and the highly efficient scheduling algorithm can effectively reduce the static power consumption by over 60% in low traffic cases, avoiding unnecessary waste of energy.

Secondly, the enhanced Doherty power amplifier technology developed by Huawei can increase the efficiency of the power amplifier from 33% in 2006 to 45%.

Thirdly, the power consumed by the green BTS is far less than 750 W. The green BTS can be powered by electricity that is directly generated from solar energy, wind energy, methane, or other clean energies.

Easy Installation

Huawei' s full series of the fourth generation BTSs will be highly modularized. All BTSs will be unified into two modules: the base band module and the radio frequency module. The capacity of these BTSs will be improved greatly through the introduction of multi-carrier and broadband radio frequency technologies. After the capacity bottleneck is cleared, the distributed BTS will find wider applications in network construction in the future. The BTS can then be stacked and assembled like building blocks in various scenarios. This will reduce the costs for network construction and shorten the period from the deployment to commercial use of the network. Thus the distributed BTS is a revolutionary form of BTS.

Reducing Energy Consumed by Air Conditioners

The temperature in the equipment room shall be kept within a certain range to ensure the stable running of the main equipment. The existing working temperature of the main equipment is about 25 degrees. Technical innovations can make the main equipment adapt to a higher working temperature. If the heat generated by running the main equipment cannot be dissipated efficiently, the temperature in the small equipment room will rise rapidly. Therefore, an efficient heat dissipation mechanism will help to reduce the use of air conditioners.

Integrated Equipment Room

The following national climate division map shows that Qinghai Province is in the cold area. This geographic location is favorable for heat dissipation of the equipment room.

Huawei has launched two kinds of integrated equipment rooms: the ITS1000 and the ITS2000. The ITS1000 is a site assembled structure and can be installed by only four people in two days. The ITS2000 is a pre-assembled structure. It is assembled in factories and then transported to the site. It needs four people one hour to install the ITS2000 before the site is put into operation. These integrated equipment rooms adopts the straight ventilation design, high-performance heat-insulating boards and compact internal design. The straight ventilation design can reduce 40% to 70% of power consumption. The high-performance heat-insulating boards, compared with the ordinary boards of the same size, help to reduce 10% to 25% of power consumed by the air conditioners. The compact internal design can save more than 40% space while meeting the overall spatial requirements. 

Clean Energy Power Supply

In addition to effectively reducing electricity consumption, Huawei manages to generate electricity from clean energies such as solar energy and wind energy instead of relying on the mains supply, thus achieving the goals of energy conservation and emission reduction.

Hybrid Wind-Solar Energy Power Supply

Qinghai Province is in the plateau-continental climate zone. It receives over 2,500 hours of sunshine annually and ranks the first among all provinces in China in terms of the sunshine time and the amount of total solar radiation. In the central and western parts of the Qingnan Plateau, the Caidamu Basin, the area around the Qinghai Lake, and the southern part of the tablelands of the south of Qinghai, the wind energy is available for more than 5,000 hours a year. In Chaerhan, the area that has the largest amount of wind energy in Qinghai Province, the wind energy is available for an accumulated period of 6131 hours annually. 

The analysis of the distribution of wind energy and solar energy in China shows that Qinghai Province has the natural advantages over the utilization of clean green energies.

To prevent the influence of contingent factors in electricity generated solely from wind energy or solar energy, the Green Project of Qinghai Mobile adopts a power supply solution featuring hybrid wind-solar energy. This power supply solution can reduce costs, and provide reliable electricity power that is sufficient to ensure the stable running of the base station.

Huawei Green Project Solution

Huawei solution for the new generation green network demonstrates the environmental-friendly philosophy at various aspects such as the BTS, core equipment room, new energies and supply chain. The distributed BTSs can be deployed flexibly. The intelligent integrated equipment room has less reliance and lower requirements on air conditioners. Clean energies such as wind energy and solar energy are used to reduce the discharge of carbon dioxide. Recyclable packing material is employed and environmental-friendly transportation means are chosen. Huawei makes efforts to reduce energy consumption and the total costs for operators at every stage and contributes to the Green Blue Ocean Project of the telecommunications industry. 

It is estimated that Huawei green network solution can help to reduce 56% to 83% of power consumption of the main equipment, and 30% to 80% of power consumption by using the intelligent equipment room. Compared with an ordinary network solution, Huawei green network solution can reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO) by 10% within ten years, helping the operators to achieve their social responsibilities and economic benefits.

Introduction to Qinghai Province

Qinghai Province lies in the northeastern part of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. The whole province is on the Plateau. The topography in Qinghai Province is complicated and diverse. The average altitude of Qinghai is over 3,000 meters. The Qingnan Plateau accounts for more than half of the total area of the province with an average altitude over 4,000 meters. In Qinghai Province, flatlands occupy 30.1% of the province' s total area, foothills 18.7%, and highlands 51.2%. Plateaus, basins, and valleys stretch between the mountains. The topography is high and steep in the western part of the province and slopes gradually from the west to the east. The west-to-east mountain ranges and the north-to-south mountain ranges form the geomorphic framework of Qinghai Province. Qinghai Province is abundant in solar radiation, sunshine, and wind energy.