Innovation Review on Energy in Telecom, Mar. 18

McKinsey estimates that 5% of telecom operating costs are in energy. As telecom competition increases, and margins narrow, it becomes increasingly important to save every single percent of operating costs possible. At the same time, there is increasing pressure to operate in an environmentally responsible manner. The good news is that these two trends are in alignment, as global energy prices have been flat for the past five years, and, because of the dropping cost of renewable sources, are starting a long-term downward trend.

Storage technologies remain applicable for backup power during disasters or power outages, but these same batteries may now play a larger role even when grid power is available. Lithium-based storage solutions are emerging to enable arbitrage with time-of-day or spot energy prices, and can bridge downtime of renewable sources. Lithium is almost at price parity with lead-acid, but has double the useful life, and 5x the cycle-life of the old batteries. Onsite battery backup can also obviate the need for costly and troublesome diesel-generator solutions.

Meanwhile, hardware and newer 7nm chipset solutions, SSDs, white boxes that can spin-up or down on demand, are all playing a role in improving the energy demand of modern datacenters not just on a per MIPS basis, but on a per rack basis IDC says energy consumption per server is growing 9% per year. Data centers are getting hotter. The question of “what to do with excess heat in the datacenter” is driving the functional parameter of available compute power as well as the topic of energy consumption. In one case, just tolerating a 3 degree Celsius rise in server room air temperature resulted in a 25% savings in energy.

And, as anything in 2020, AI is changing the game. With Software Defined Radios, Virtual Machines, modern Datacenters, and Big Data, the AI and analytics layer can manage the network to optimize energy use, identify problem areas that can be improved, and predict & manage spikes and surges. Most telco network devices are already fairly smart and connected, but IoT sensors in the right places can provide 20/20 visibility on energy and temperature to round out the system’s knowledge and create “Energy Digitization” for “Software-Defined Energy Use”.

There’s a lot to talk about when it comes to Energy in telecom networks. Join us at our Telecom Council meeting, in our virtual meeting room, to hear from some experts, some operators, and a group of innovators who have the solutions to take us into this next decade of renewables, AI, hot data, densification, and local production.

ComTech Forum meetings introduce curated startups and innovation to global telcos, telecom vendors and communications investors who are dedicated to partnering with new companies and investing in new technologies. This will be a live, online, interactive meeting and is not recorded, though members can access the presentations and attendee list through our library.

This month's 3-hour agenda is open to non-members and is packed with analyst insight, industry experts, up to 10 startup pitches, and time for followup networking, demos and introductions.

REMOTE ACCESS