Guide: 5g is accelerating to come. In order to achieve Super bandwidth, massive connectivity and ultra-low delay, three significant changes will take place in the communication network: the introduction of new frequency and new technology, the addition of new sites, and the sinking of MEC. At the same time, with 5g moving towards a thousand lines and hundreds of industries, ICT will be further integrated, and network infrastructure sharing will be more full……
So, what direction will these changes drive the development of communication energy?
With an insight into the future, Huawei released ten major trends of communication energy in 2025, and predicted key industry trends and technology trends in the next five years. We hope to join you in witnessing a disruptive revolution along the curve of technological change.
Trend 1: energy digitization
With the arrival of 5g, the number of stations has increased dramatically, and the operation and maintenance has become more complex. The rising OPEX will devour the profits of operators. Energy digitalization is very important to simplify operation and maintenance and reduce the cost of site operation and maintenance, which is the general trend. With the support of digital sensing, control, processing and other technologies, it is expected that by 2025, 90% of the world's stations will realize energy digitalization, and it is possible for operators to build a simple, green and automatic driving network.
Trend 2: scale application of green energy
In order to cope with climate change and achieve the sustainable development goal of the United Nations SDG, many operators around the world take oil saving and maintenance saving, zero oil engine in the whole network, green low-carbon and sustainable development as their strategies. Therefore, the investment scale of green energy is increasing year by year. Photovoltaic, wind energy, hydrogen fuel cell, lithium battery and other new energy technologies are becoming more and more mature. Although the initial investment is relatively high, they are gradually favored by operators due to their advantages of green, environmental protection, low carbon, maintenance free, low cost of electricity.
Trend 3: lithium in lead out
5g is developing rapidly, power consumption of the station is doubled, and energy storage system with higher energy density is needed. Lithium battery is just in time. At present, the cycle life of lithium battery is 5 times that of lead-acid battery, and the floating charge life is 2 times that of lead-acid battery. The life cycle cost of lithium battery is lower than that of lead-acid battery. In the next three years, the price of lithium battery will drop by 30%. It is estimated that the absolute cost of lithium battery will be basically the same as that of lead-acid battery in 2022. In addition, the lithium battery can make full use of the cycle characteristics. Through peak shaving to avoid the capacity increase and transformation of the city power, peak to valley electricity price shifting to reduce the electricity fee, the network construction and operation costs will be further reduced.
Trend 4: communication energy goes to thousands of industries with 5g
5g will lead the base station equipment to various enterprise level application scenarios, such as ports, mining areas, power, transportation, even colleges, hospitals and communities. A variety of application scenarios require that communication energy must be more flexible and diverse, which also drives the further evolution of communication energy to digital, modular and flexible.Trend 5: ICT power supply integration
The popularity of 5g has brought information and intelligent changes to all levels of society. It Internet enterprises have begun to develop ever-changing applications with the help of CT communication network, ICT integration will be an inevitable trend. This change puts forward diversified requirements for the power supply and backup of the original station and computer room. The communication energy should support the power supply system, backup power supply, thermal management, space management and wiring management of the two categories of equipment at the same time, and will also face new challenges in operation and maintenance.
Trend 6: AI collaboration
The doubling of the number and energy consumption of 5g stations leads to high operation and maintenance and energy costs, which affects the rapid popularization of 5g. AI collaboration technology will be the key means to break the situation. The application of AI in communication energy includes: AI algorithm modeling, realizing resource allocation and energy efficiency optimization of slice network site; AI analysis, realizing automatic driving of network.
Trend 7: simplicity of the whole stack
In the future, the connection will be everywhere, more and more spectrum will be put into use, and the site construction will continue to be encrypted. In 5g era, from site to carrier network to core network, the energy system is becoming more and more huge and complex, and it is more necessary to simplify the deployment and control of TCO. In the future, the end-to-end and full life cycle minimalism technologies of energy network such as one station, one cabinet, one knife, network automatic driving operation and maintenance will be applied in a large scale, greatly improving the efficiency of station construction and capacity expansion, reducing the complexity of energy operation and maintenance, and achieving a minimalist energy network.
Trend 8: polyphase architecture
At present, most of the power supply does not have multi-phase input and output functions. It needs to combine a variety of different energy conversion equipment into a set of system, which has the problems of large volume, low efficiency, many maintenance interfaces, high equipment cost and operation and maintenance cost. It is predicted that in the future, the multi-phase architecture will be popularized in the communication energy, with higher system density and efficiency, simpler deployment and more intelligent operation and maintenance.
Trend 9: extreme efficiency
At present, the efficiency of communication power supply generally stays at the level of rectifier module. The efficiency of rectifier module of mainstream manufacturers is generally 90% - 98%. In the future, it will continue to challenge the efficiency limit, from the current maximum of 98% to 99% (relative to 98% efficiency, the rectifier loss will be reduced by 50%). But in the whole station, energy consumption occurs more in power generation system, temperature control system and power supply line. Operators will pay more attention to the improvement of station level energy efficiency and network level energy efficiency. Energy efficient heat exchange scheme and natural heat dissipation scheme will replace air conditioning and become the mainstream heat management scheme.Trend 10: safe and reliable
With AI intelligence coming, communication energy will develop from isolated site to energy network. Diversified power supply and backup requirements, complex deployment environment and digital network environment put forward higher security and credibility demands for energy network. The safety, reliability and availability of the hardware watt flow and the security, privacy and toughness of the software bit flow will become the important characteristics of the safe and reliable energy network.
