How to assess and manage energy performance of numerous telecommunication base stations: Evidence in China

Abstract

Existing calculated benchmarking methods and main energy performance assessment schemes often lack the practical ability to manage the energy performance of a vast number of widespread telecommunication base stations (TBSs). Therefore, on the basis of a TBS survey, this paper puts forward the dynamic simulation and sensitivity analysis method to allow the new rule “one energy benchmark for a group of similar TBSs” rather than the traditional rule “one benchmark for one assessed building”. The new method reasonably limits the number of benchmarks and a feasible benchmark system is established for managing numerous TBSs. The results indicate that, first, more than one million TBSs distributed in a large area of China can be divided into 448 typical scenarios. Second, the benchmarks for reasonable energy use of these scenarios can be organized into four simple benchmarking charts. Third, the attempt to establish further challenging energy benchmarks shows that the most energy-saving measure in TBSs, i.e., ventilation cooling, can fully eliminate the negative impact of poor configurations of envelops and cooling coefficients of performance (COP). Finally, establishing telecom industrial standards for locating the reasonable TBS energy consumption level even in giant countries appears feasible.