Green Telecom Part XIII: Eltek Valere leaps forward in power efficiency

The telecom industry is now willing to pay more for power equipment that is more fuel efficient, power gear maker Eltek-Valere is reporting. After years of making its power products more efficient by 1% to 2% with each new generation of system, Eltek-Valere decided to take a bigger leap and aim for a 4% efficiency gain, up to 96% efficiency, with the power products it introduced in 2008.  Industry reaction to the new technology has been gratifying, said Mike Kania, director of business development, even though the new systems cost slightly more.

“Market reaction has been great,” Kania said. “For something like this to go over, the case has to be compelling. In the big operators, the ones really intent on saving energy, the people that control the capital budgets and the people that control the operating budgets are two different groups. So what we are doing is asking one group to spend a little more so the other group can save. We’ve had to work the folks up above so they see it and give some direction. The reaction to the product and the concept has been great.”

Eltek Valere was created when Norway-based Eltek Energy acquired Valere Power -- a Richardson, Texas, company -- in 2007. The US company was influenced by the European firm that was farther along the energy efficiency curve, Kania said.

“There is a lot more attention being paid to green initiatives in Europe,” Kania said. “That got some of us doing a little more investigation into the whole subject. All of these operators in US were signing up to have this tremendous reduction in electricity usage. With all the building on new wireless sites and subscribers moving to broadband which is always on, the problem is becoming a huge one. They are trying to cut electricity but growing the network at a rate that says you are going in the wrong direction.”

Since about two-thirds of all the power that is used by the telecom industry is in the DC power systems that run the network, Kania said, it made sense to focus on reducing power consumption there. “Regardless of what other equipment you use, DC power is always in the loop, it applies to everything, so reducing energy consumption there will have a big impact.”

Each generation of power equipment tends to remain in the network about six to seven years, Kania said. “With each one of the generations, we’ve been able to increase efficiency by 1% or 2% -- so efficiency was at maybe 87% at the start of the 90s, and we’ve now worked our way up to 92%, which is not a great improvement over that time. It is such mature technology, when push comes to shove, suppliers are willing to get the most efficiency they can but without impacting first cost, because that has been what customers focused on.”

“We thought that if there’s ever a time to change that model, it’s now,” Kania said. “If we could build the exact same product but build it with dramatically higher efficiency, that would make sense. We had some technology on power conversion that actually let us do that.”

The products featuring the more efficient rectifiers came out in sequence – outside plant and CPE power supplies were launched in March, followed by the central office version and then the wireless site version. The products were identical to existing lines, sitting in the same boxes and using the same controllers, but the efficiency was in the 96% range, Kania said.

“In the old rectifier 8% [of energy] is thrown away in terms of heat,” Kania said. “You also need to provide the cooling equipment to get that out of the building. In the 96% version, only 4% is being used in conversion. So over 25 years, we went from 87% to 92%, and then we went from 92 to 96 in one jump.”

The extra cost of the more efficient systems is recovered in two years of lower fuel bills, Kania said. Over the life of a DC power systems, “the energy savings pays for the entire cost of the rectifier,” Kania said.