Huawei used a Vienna industry summit to urge telecom operators to pool backup batteries for electricity grid services, offering a potential revenue stream while reserving power to keep networks running.
Huawei Digital Power Europe Chief Technology Officer Michel FRAISSE put the cost of power from solar generation and storage at less than $0.04 per kilowatt-hour. He estimated that participation in a virtual power plant could bring in about €800 a year per European site, with an average payback period of about three years. He also cited a 100% improvement in power availability. Huawei did not disclose how it calculated the estimates, how many sites they covered or the baseline for the availability comparison.
A virtual power plant coordinates energy equipment at separate locations so it can provide grid services as a group. Under Huawei’s proposal, telecom batteries could charge when electricity is cheaper and discharge during peak periods. An aggregator could pool capacity from many sites, while operators would decide how much power each site needs to maintain network service.
Huawei said the 10th Global ICT Energy Efficiency Summit, held Oct. 14-15, launched the “Transitioning to Prosumers—Global Initiative for the Communications Industry.” The initiative calls on operators and partners to coordinate site energy resources, technical interfaces and business arrangements. Huawei said it would continue working with partners on technology and standards.
Gautham Gnanajothi, global senior vice president of research at Frost & Sullivan, described the pressure behind the proposal, according to Huawei’s account of his summit remarks. Networks are becoming more dependent on reliable energy as supply grows less certain, while operators’ revenue has not kept pace with investment and data traffic.
Huawei also cited a rural Southeast Asian deployment in which it said 86% of sites operated on solar power for 24 months without diesel refills. The company did not specify the number of sites or the dates covered by that result. It gave no timetable for implementing the wider initiative or details of its funding arrangements.
