Green Telecom Part V: Emerson’s comprehensive approach

Every telecommunications carrier is, on some level, working to reduce power consumption: to cut costs and operate more efficiently and to reduce the environmental impact of operating their networks. But according to a major power equipment vendor, Emerson Network Power, many of these efforts are project-specific or piecemeal.

To promote a more comprehensive approach, Emerson has produced a plan featuring 12 different strategies designed to reduce overall energy use by telecom networks. The plan addresses existing network inefficiencies and spells out actions required to save energy in each case.

Emerson’s Energy Logic for Telecommunications is in some ways a follow-up to its Energy Logic for Data Centers, a strategy announced a year ago to reduce power consumption at data centers. The newest version aims to eliminate power inefficiencies along the energy paths of radio base stations and central offices (COs).

“We see ourselves as unique in the industry in that we have a much bigger footprint on the infrastructure of networks out there,” said Jacques Poulin, vice president of global marketing for Emerson Network Power’s energy systems business. “Rather than just jump in on rectifiers or power supplies in the embedded side, we wanted to use our expertise to address the total model and then give this to our customers — something that identifies real pockets of inefficiency along the entire energy path. We like to say we go from grid to chip, and we want to do it better from grid to chip as well.”

The solutions Emerson is proposing range from simple and straightforward to much more complicated and long-term, and Emerson realizes that in some cases, the investment may seem steep, Poulin said.

“The first thing our customers react positively to is energy management,” Poulin said. “That involves applying smarter controls to regulate temperatures in a smart way, and for very little investment, you get big results. Those are the first steps. The second step, and this is fairly new, is our customers want some training in certain areas like cooling. We will follow up with them, and often we will end up going to their site and doing a site audit.”