POWER EFFICIENCY IMPROVEMENT IN NETWORK EQUIPMENT USING SERVICE GROUP CONSOLIDATION

Particular embodiments provide systems and methods to reduce the average power consumption per subscriber. Particular embodiments select windows of time when network components are under-utilized by subscribers of the network. During periods of under-utilization of a network component, subscribers may be consolidated onto a smaller number of network components by increasing the service group size. The consolidation increases the service group size, which has the effect of lowering bandwidth per subscriber. However, the bandwidth use per subscriber may be lower during this time. The use of the smaller number of network components allows the energy for these components to be used more efficiently. When the subscriber network demands increase, the distribution system places the network components into an active power state and redistributes the subscribers to the newly-activated components. This decreases the service group size, such as back to the original size.