ENVIRONMENT

Energy efficient mobile base stations

Over the past three years, we have put in place a plan to upgrade and convert existing mobile base stations to energy efficient ones in Singapore.

As at 31 March 2015, 97% of all our base stations, new and existing, was converted to ‘green’ base stations despite a rise in the number of base stations installed across the country.

Although the absolute electricity use from our base stations increased by 10 GWh in FY2015 compared to FY2014, we achieved a 5% reduction in energy use per cell carrier and have seen a steady reduction in the trend.

Electricity use per cell carrier (kWh)

Getting Smart

In Australia, one of Optus’ biggest programmes to reduce energy has been to upgrade over 500 base stations with smart metering. Just like meters on a home, they allow us to monitor the energy use at each station by the hour so that we can see when our consumption goes up or down due to network traffic. The data that these meters provide gives us the knowledge to better manage our energy consumption and ultimately helps us influence future equipment use and network design.

Next year, we plan to upgrade up to 500 base stations to continue to help us identify cost effective ways to save both energy and emissions.

In addition, we now enjoy cost savings at our telephone exchanges from free cooling, which is now a standard design feature of all new mobile facilities where the climate is suitable.