Sidebar: 5G Base Station Power Consumption Issue -China article
by 海外风云 (courtesy of Yigang Cai)
A recent news report from China (used Google Translate to convert to English) highlighted the critical issue of network operators shutting down 5G base stations to save electricity bills. Selected 5G base stations in China are being powered off every day from 21:00 to next day 9:00 to reduce energy consumption and lower electricity bills. 5G base stations are truly large consumers of energy such that electricity bills have become one of the biggest costs for 5G network operators.
- Using this method of turning off the 5G base station at night to save power can save 15 Chinese yuan a day in electricity costs. The current 200,000 base stations can save 1.2 billion annually.
- By the end of this year, 1 million 5G base stations will be built, saving 6 billion in a year.
- If there are more than 2 million base stations, 12 billion electricity can be saved a year, which is equivalent to China Unicom’s total profit in one year.
- If there are more than 2 million base stations and they are not turned off for 24 hours, then all the money earned by Unicom will be paid for electricity.
- The more base stations, the greater the loss of revenues.
How many 5G base stations will the future society need? If the transmission speed and coverage rate required by 5G are reached, the total number of base stations may exceed everyone’s imagination.
According to news reports, the North Bund of Shanghai’s Hongqiao District is the world’s first gigabit 5G high-speed demonstration zone, with 26 base stations per square kilometer. According to the plan, the total number of 5G base stations in Shanghai’s Hongqiao District will exceed 1,000 in two years. The total area of Hongqiao District is 23.5 square kilometers.
According to the plan, about 50 base stations are required per square kilometer. If 5G base stations are covered nationwide, 9.6 million x 50=480 million base stations are required.
The electricity bill is equivalent to several hundred times the annual profit of China Unicom. Even if it only covers 1% of the country’s area, electricity bills can bankrupt the three major operators.
This is only the electricity bill and does not include any other costs. How much power does a 5G base station consume? Look at this test data, this is already the world’s top-level base station, produced by the world’s top suppliers, using the most advanced chips from Japan and the United States.
5G base stations consume several times more power than 4G base stations.
Editor’s Note:
A typical 5G base station consumes up to twice or more the power of a 4G base station, writes
MTN Consulting Chief Analyst Matt Walker in a new report entitled “
Operators facing power cost crunch.” And energy costs can grow even more at higher frequencies, due to a need for more antennas and a denser layer of small cells. Edge compute facilities needed to support local processing and new internet of things (IoT) services will also add to overall network power usage. Exact estimates differ by source, but MTN says the industry consensus is that 5G will double to triple energy consumption for mobile operators, once networks scale.