Nokia brainwave turns cell towers into cash cows with backup batteries
- Reference: 1708625825
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/02/22/nokia_cell_tower_power_grid/
- Source link:
The telecoms infrastructure giant says the tool can switch cell base stations from grid power to backup batteries at times of peak demand to lower energy costs. Alternatively, it can provide energy back to the grid to generate revenue for the mobile operator.
Called Virtual Power Plant (VPP) Controller, the software creates "a new purpose and function" for the base station backup battery storage as this will mostly be sitting idle because power cuts are rare, Nokia claims.
[1]
The sales pitch is that by switching from grid power to backup battery operation, mobile operators can lower their energy costs in the electricity spot market, which means that if the price gets above a certain level, the cell base station switches to running off battery power instead.
[2]
[3]
Nokia also notes that in countries which operate a power reserve market, third parties can bid to provide power to the grid. Mobile operators can use the backup battery storage from base stations to provide energy to the market instead of drawing grid energy.
The advantage of this (for the operator) is that it turns their battery backup systems into an investment with a financial return, Nokia claims, while becoming part of the reserve power resources for the power grid help to avoid power cuts and can reduce the overall CO 2 footprint.
[4]
Nokia has completed several trials with the system and aims to make the software available later this year. We asked the company if it had any prospective takers, but it has yet to name names.
"Nokia's Virtual Power Plant is an incredible innovation that will help our customers monetize the energy stored in their backup batteries while also reducing carbon emissions," Nokia President of Mobile Networks Tommi Uitto said in a statement.
Reg readers are no doubt wondering if this is such a good idea. After all, the whole point of a backup battery storage system is to be there in case of a power failure, and the last thing you want is for the phone network to go offline in an emergency.
[5]Biden admin keeps O-RAN dream alive with $42M funding for R&D facility
[6]Telco giants show it's tough selling 5G kit right now
[7]Nokia walks the walk about its RAN to play on Uncle Sam's China fears
[8]Is it time for 6G already? Traffic analysis says yep
Nokia claims that its software ensures it is safe to use battery power in the power reserve market as it is able to estimate how much extra backup battery capacity is available. This relies on using machine learning algorithms to create "smart" offerings to the grid based on the actual and the predicted power consumption and the extra backup power capacity.
"Nokia are copying an idea from Finnish telco Elisa," according to James Crawshaw, practice leader at Omdia. "The problem is that not all cell sites actually have batteries and if they do they are usually lead-acid not Li-ion so they are not suitable for this use," Crawshaw told The Register . "Upgrading to Li-ion might pay for itself over 3-5 years thanks to the revenue from VPP, but it is still a rather small revenue opportunity compared to the existing revenue of a telco," he added.
[9]
Likewise, Microsoft [10]introduced a similar system at its Dublin datacenter in Ireland in 2022, developed with power management outfit Eaton. That proved successful enough that Microsoft announced last year it wants to [11]expand the scheme to other datacenters operated by the company.
However, Moises Levy, principal analyst for DataCenter Physical Infrastructure at Omdia, warned at the time that fans of this setup should not lose sight of the fact that the energy storage system (ESS) is there to provide backup for the vital IT kit.
"It is important to highlight reliability, and the main function of ESS is to protect the mission critical equipment, with the required runtime in case of a power failure," Levy said. ®
Get our [12]Tech Resources
[1] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZdfSGy57D8kcoFPQQ6Lo5gAAAIU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZdfSGy57D8kcoFPQQ6Lo5gAAAIU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZdfSGy57D8kcoFPQQ6Lo5gAAAIU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZdfSGy57D8kcoFPQQ6Lo5gAAAIU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/13/biden_admin_keeps_oran_dream/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/25/ericsson_nokia_results/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/17/nokia_us_sales_list/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/29/mobile_industry_looks_to_6g/
[9] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZdfSGy57D8kcoFPQQ6Lo5gAAAIU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2022/07/08/microsoft_grid_interactive_ups_dublin/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/24/microsoft_wants_to_export_grid_interactive/
[12] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
These are cell towers. They won't have diesel generators as a battery would be sufficient to power them for the required time. But if they could make money this way they could slot in a bigger battery than they'd otherwise use, and that excess (and then some) would be paid for by selling that extra power at premium rates to the utility during peak alerts (while keeping enough power in reserve to meet whatever runtime target they have)
Sods Law
will dictate the mains failure will occur just after you've run the batteries down to export power at a good price ....
Doesn't sound right
For this to work, the battery capacity has to be larger than what the tower really needs for backup purposes, so the operator can afford to sell excess power back to the grid or to run from the batteries down when power is expensive. If I was the tower operator, I might be wondering why I was sold such an oversized battery in the first place. I might prefer to pay less for a smaller battery that can simply act as a traditional backup.
Re: Doesn't sound right
Not really. I have a ton of capacity in the UPS on my PC here that just about never gets used, but when I need it, then I usually need most of it.
Also, it does a battery good to discharge it occasionally and not be continuously charging it. That's what kills most folk's laptop batteries.
Re: Doesn't sound right
Possibly this system doesn't export energy per se, but any powerful (in terms of MW, not MWh) backup battery -could- play the Balancing Mechanism / Capacity Market by disconnecting and dropping to UPS/diesel whenever paid to do so by the grid operator.
But they don't have to actually do anything in order to get paid, they just have to have a large enough installation that National Grid et al will pay them annually for the privelege of being able to tell them to disconnect X megawatts, thus letting themselves tell the government and the people that they are improving grid resilience etc.
It could well be that they are inflating the figures by claiming to be able to disconnect a megawatt or so, even though the actual equipment uses a variable amount of power and may only be using a few kilowatts at any given time ... That particular market doesn't seem to care about the actual energy saved, but is just an auction for people to sell "capacity" which they never intend to use.
The trouble with the "smart grid" though IMO, is that it makes cyber warfare all the more possible.
Perhaps applicable to new installations or upgrades where extra battery capacity can be built in. I'm sure the bean counters will have paired battery capacity to a minimum in existing installations.
This makes some sense, I guess.
You are more likely to need your battery fully charged if something bad is in the offing - gales predicted, Russians massing by the border or Windows is going to update. Normal glitches (replacement fuse, vandalism) should be faster fixes. So they are charging up their battery when power is cheap and releasing some of it when power is expensive, assuming all is quiet. It's not as likely to go as wrong as some really crazy ideas like implementing GAI on mainstream operating systems, some of which run important processes, or connecting your basic utilities to the public internet and opening them up to ransomware attacks. You know, the really daft stuff you'd have to be a complete idiot to do.
Probably best avoided in countries like Japan though, as quakes are unlikely to be predictable any time soon. In Japan, you keep your batteries charged and your emergency bag packed.
Re: This makes some sense, I guess.
"Japan".
If memory serves, Fukushima had backup diesel generators to keep the cooling system going in the event of mains failure, however, the tsunami also knocked out the generators leaving only the battery backups, which only had one hour's worth of power stored in them. One hour later... the rest is history. Must be a lesson or two there somewhere.
Re: This makes some sense, I guess.
Yes, it's "if you over-engineer your backup and redundancy systems they can handle a shock orders of magnitude larger than they were designed for".
Re: This makes some sense, I guess.
"Must be a lesson or two there somewhere."
I would suggest "company greed" as they had been varned about not having enough outside electricity for an emergency but they decided not to do anything about it (yet).
Peak power price
We recently had wholesale power prices peaking at 50 times normal levels due to a system failure, which continue with a sustained blackout due to hard limits on power availability.
At that price, it makes sense to switch to battery power, even for those stations that aren't blacked out. And it frees up power to go to people who don't have battery backups.
I would have thought most telco sites are only going to have a couple of hours of battery to tide them over in case the diesel gen dies