Fraunhofer Center for Assistive Information and Communication Solutions – AICOSSavEnergy - Energy Efficient Base Stations
Fraunhofer Portugal participates in the SavEnergy project, being part of a consortium composed by Efacec Systems Engineering and Optimus.
The overall project objective is to investigate and develop new solutions to energy optimization of antennas installations, incorporating the following aspects: increasing energy efficiency, using equipment with lower energy consumption, promoting the use of renewable energies and monitoring energy consumption taking into account environmental and other conditions, in order to devise the best strategies for the operation of micro-generation solutions.
Mobile networks have high energy consumption, especially in places with installed antennas, mainly due to heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) and UPS. The daily energy consumption for a mobile network can represent 120 Wh/day per customer.
Fraunhofer Portugal’s role in this project is to develop a smart “Energy Box” that will monitor, control and manage the different components in the telecommunications antennas site.
The “Energy Box” will be able to manage the telecommunications antenna site regarding its generated energy and consumed energy; ensuring the interface and control of the different sub-systems (solar production, eolic production, radio, batteries, network interconnecting systems, etc.) in order to maximize the entire set efficiency.
This “Energy Box” will also do the interface with a central management system in order to:
> Ensure the existent production sources management in all the sites network;
> Management consumption;
> Development of functioning and controlling algorithms for the different equipment;
> Define/build consumption profiles for each site;
> Update, dynamically, the energy production forecast from renewable sources in each site.
The project leader is BE Towering, a company for management of telecommunications towers, which is responsible for the antennas installations of Optimus, reference operator for Mobile and Fixed Network, Internet and Voice.
The consortium partners are Fraunhofer Portugal and Efacec Systems Engineering, dedicated to designing and building power systems for telecommunications; and systems and solutions for energy production, namely from renewable sources, among other activities.
Source: 30.07.2012, Fraunhofer Portugal