Telecom hardware giant Ericsson and Deutsche Telekom are working on using wind and solar energy to power the energy-hungry 5G mobile site in Germany, to balance against rising electric costs.
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Reported first by Reuters, energy-intensive European companies are already looking to innovate to get reliable low-carbon energy as high electric bills touch the skies.
Telecom operators especially have another motivation to slash costs as they¡¯ll require the necessary funds -- as much as $872 billion globally -- to rollout next-gen 5G networks until 2030.
Ericsson¡¯s head of sustainability, Mats Pellback Scharp, in an interview stated that energy costs in the telecom sector are around $25-30 billion per year, and thus it¡¯s as important as investment in radio equipment and other things.
He claims that a 5-kilowatt wind turbine and solar modules are theoretically capable of powering the entire site of Dittenheim, around 120 miles north of Munich in Bavaria.?
As of now, 12 square meters of solar panels have already been functioning for a year, offering around 10 percent of the necessary energy. When the sun goes down or there¡¯s no wind, backup power is provided via conventional fossil-fuel-based power plants.
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According to Scharp, local renewable energy can be used by operators when market prices are higher -- around mornings and evenings and only rely on the grid when lower demand reduces costs.
This technique could also be rolled out to other mobile sites in the future and could be a boon to the telecom sector where energy costs account for five percent of telecom operator¡¯s operating expenditure on average, (according to McKinsey) and is only expected to rise with global 5G deployment.
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