Significantly extending the operational range of free cooling in radio Base Station indoor shelters

Both telecommunication equipment providers and solution providers are facing immense pressure to drastically enhance the energy efficiency of their hardware and networks in order to ensure environmental impact is as negligible as possible. Furthermore, increasing fuel and electricity costs are causing ever increasing operation expenditure. Alcatel-Lucent has a strong track record of tackling the aforementioned issues by innovating and deploying a suite of low-cost energy-efficient "green" telecommunications solutions. In this paper, we provide a description and analysis on one of these solutions, called "Smart Cool Solution for Base Stations (SCS4BS)", which is dedicated to the optimization of the operational range of traditional "free cooling" solutions. SCS4BS significantly extends the ambient temperature operating range of so-called "Free Cooling" which utilizes fresh air external to the base station for cooling. Its key principle is to maximise the temperature difference between the inlet free ambient air and the exit hot air that is ejected to the ambient thereby significantly enhancing the thermal efficiency of the cooling solution. The main difference between the SCS4BS solution and other solutions on the market is that, for low cost and simple installation, we can reduce the amount of time that the air conditioner operates by up to 99% which in turn provides significant energy savings by reducing the amount of time the air conditioner operates. By employing our SCS4BS solution service providers can; 1) completely eliminate or drastically reduce the use of the air conditioner system which typically consumes up to one third of the total base station power; 2) extend the lifetime of the air conditioning equipment; 3) reduce system downtime due to air conditioning fails; and 4) drastically reduce the telecom network yearly energy consumption, which contributes to total cost of ownership (TCO) savings and increases the number of base station sites eligible to alternative energy solutions based on deep cycle batteries, solar and/or wind energy sources.