Reducing the Cooling Energy Consumption of Telecom Sites by Liquid Cooling

Abstract

The use of mobile data has increased and will continue to increase in the future, because more data is moving to wireless networks such as 5G. Cooling energy need is also expected to increase in indoor telecom rooms, and can be as high as the equipment’s own power consumption. The world’s first liquid Base Transceiver Station (BTS) was adopted into commercial use in 2018, in Helsinki, Finland. Conventional air-cooled BTS hardware was converted into liquid-cooled BTS equipment. Heat from the BTS was pumped out of the site room, and thus ventilation or air conditioning was not needed for the heat load from the BTS. Heat stored in the liquid was released into the ventilation duct of the building, still providing annual cooling energy savings of 70%, when compared to air cooling. In the future, 80% of the total dissipated energy, 13450 kWh/a in total, can potentially be used for heating purposes. In terms of CO2 emissions, adapting liquid cooling showed an 80% reduction potential when compared to air cooling.

Evaluation of Free Cooling Technique at the Telecom Cell Site in Ghana

“…Methods include mixing lowtemperature outside air with warm shelter air, adjusting FC unit volume flow rate, and upgrading telecommunication equipment. In 2018, an air-cooled CS in Helsinki-Finland was transformed into a liquid-cooled telecommunication equipment, it resulted in 70% annual energy savings and an 80% reduction in CO2 emissions compared to air cooling, with the potential to use 80% of total dissipated energy for heating (Huttunen et al, 2020). The study by Gözcü and Erden (2019), examines the energy consumption of data centres using free cooling systems like the direct air-side economizer , indirect air-side economizer , indirect evaporative cooler , indirect water-side economizer integrated with the existing cooling infrastructure of a typical 1 MW IT load centres.…”