SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
Upgrading to more efficient cellular radio towers could save enough electricity to power cities such as Phoenix, New Orleans or Seattle, according to a new study produced by US research firm J. Gold Associates.
Annually, US cell sites use a total of almost 21 million megawatt hours (MWh) of power. That’s the equivalent of the average power used by almost two million households.
“Cellular services have become a critical infrastructure component of modern life. It’s hard to imagine not being able to communicate on the go with our mobile devices, or increasingly through a wireless home gateway enabling Internet services to both residential and business customers,” the report said. “But not often discussed is the burden that the numerous cell sites places on the electricity supplies required to keep them powered and the costs associated with the power supplied.”
Each 10% reduction in total cell site power results in enough electricity saved to power the equivalent of 195,000 households. And a 40% reduction provides enough electricity to power the equivalent of almost 782,000 households, according to the study, “US Cell Sites- a Sustainability Analysis."
By upgrading both the radio hardware and the management software, each cell site could save as much as 40% of its electricity needs, the report states.
[...] According to the Cellular Telecommunications Internet Association (CTIA) there were 417,215 cellular sites in the US at the end of 2020. While that number is a moving target as more cell sites are added as new areas and/or services are deployed, J. Gold Associates used that number for its report’s calculations. (The CTIA is a trade association representing the US wireless communications industry.)
The radio element of a cellular telecommunications network is called a RAN (which is short for radio access network). The typical RAN lasts about eight years before it requires upgrades or replacement, Gold said.
[...] “In some cases, it even pays for the upgrade within three years,” the company said in its report. “Customer cases show that service providers have reduced site energy consumption by up to 15% through intelligent site control solutions."
However, some studies claim 5G consumes as much as twice the power as 4G systems. “A typical 5G base station consumes up to twice or more the power of a 4G base station, Matt Walker, chief analyst with MTN Consulting wrote in a report titled “Operators facing power cost crunch.”
Why does this sound to me as somebody is trying to convince people to upgrade to their latest offerings? [JR]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Gaaark on Thursday July 28 2022, @06:13PM (2 children)
So, if we got rid of the cellular towers altogether and we returned to land-lines, look at the power we'd have available!
I've lived my whole life with a land-line and have had no problems. All we need is to stop worrying about missing responding to a Faceplant message IMMEDIATELY and life just goes on.
And look at the money you'll be saving!
The Rogers fiasco went on in Canada and my wife and i didn't even notice.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 28 2022, @07:44PM (1 child)
Plus we can save enough energy to power Phoenix by simply stopping power to Phoenix. Think of the savings!
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Thursday July 28 2022, @08:55PM
<sarcasm>Plus we can save absolutely everything by simply stopping giving anything at all to absolutely anyone ever</sarcasm>
Master of the science of the art of the science of art.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Thursday July 28 2022, @06:25PM (4 children)
If we can reduce cellular power consumption, we can install cryptomining software on it!
/sarcasm
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by krishnoid on Thursday July 28 2022, @08:37PM
Well yeah, they *say* they're upgrading the towers to "save" power, when in fact they're changing them to beam down the mining software via 5G into the chips the vaccines installed into us. Just take capitalism, financial speculation, and cryptocurrency, feed them into a pile of machine learning simulations, and the obvious power generation solution reveals itself [youtu.be] -- only this time, distributed and wireless.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Freeman on Thursday July 28 2022, @09:55PM (2 children)
Wait, that was sarcasm?
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Funny) by captain normal on Thursday July 28 2022, @10:00PM (1 child)
Yeah...I don't understand some of the modding that goes on here either.
"It is easier to fool someone than it is to convince them that they have been fooled" Mark Twain
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 28 2022, @11:05PM
You must be new here.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 28 2022, @07:44PM (6 children)
Let's put that another way: in 2020 the US consumed about 4000 million megawatt hours [iea.org] ("million megawatt hours" is a strange way to write TWh but OK) of electrical energy. If "21 million megawatt hours" is the real number, that means cellular phone infrastructure represents about 0.5% of total electrical energy use in the United States which is practically another way to say "bugger all".
That 4000 TWh figure doesn't even count any energy consumption via burning fossil fuels (other than fuels used for electricity production).
Now reducing electricity consumption is probably really great for the operators of cell phone infrastructure, as this directly affects their bottom line, which is probably why the actual report is mostly talking about operator cost savings (although they do mention the "omg so many homes" greenwash bullshit too). But let's not pretend that upgrading half a million cell sites to use 15% less electricity is actually a good way to reduce overall US energy consumption, or even a good use of resources that could perhaps achieve better results on infrastructure upgrades elsewhere.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 28 2022, @08:03PM
Bb.bbut 21 million homes! Why is the government anti-homes? We need more investment in cell phone towers and less money on transexual military operations.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday July 28 2022, @08:32PM (4 children)
The "statistical lie" they are using is "power entire cities!!!" Why, yes, take any even slightly significant power user - such as wireless communication with just about every resident over the age of 9, active 20+ hours per day - and improve that power consumption by even 10%. There are thousands of significantly sized cities in the US, so even a 0.1% reduction in overall power consumption "powers entire cities."
Now: let's talk about vampire power and wall warts, water consumed by toilets that don't seal properly, the power we could save by increasing all thermostats 0.5F in the summer and reducing them 0.5F in the winter, etc. etc. That's enough to power entire states!
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/06/24/7408365/
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday July 29 2022, @02:44AM (3 children)
Further, how much additional power will be used by cellphones struggling to find the tower because the signal is 10% or 40% or whatever reduction-percent weaker, given one kinda depends on the other?
I can tell you something about that: my retard phone, when it's not struggling, needs a recharge about once a week (or after around 10 hours of talk). When it's having trouble keeping hold of the tower, it needs a recharge every two hours, whether it's in use or not.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday July 29 2022, @12:10PM (2 children)
We had great phones back in the flip days, Motorola Razrs, but not - same software but in a fat case with a battery that would last a week with 15 minutes of talk time a day on it, in normal circumstances. Took those phones on vacation to the mountains and they would suck themselves dry in a matter of hours with no talk time, just trying to download a picture of our cat sent by the people feeding it.
It's like saving money at the grocery store by eating at restaurants... just don't look at the big picture and everything is whatever you want to say it is.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/06/24/7408365/
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday July 29 2022, @04:49PM (1 child)
Yep, that, exactly. Penny wise, pound foolish.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 02 2022, @12:52PM
I've always wanted to know- is it wise to pound pennies?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 28 2022, @08:09PM (3 children)
"more efficient cellular radio towers "
The best way to do that is obsolete the baroque backwards-compatible protocols they use.
and who is this "research" company shilling for?
(Score: 4, Touché) by acid andy on Thursday July 28 2022, @09:02PM (2 children)
You mean so millions more cellphones get sent to landfill and/or to be burnt on open bonfires in the Third World to extract the gold?
Master of the science of the art of the science of art.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 28 2022, @09:08PM
the inter-cell protocols, dipshit.
(Score: 3, Funny) by SomeGuy on Friday July 29 2022, @06:49PM
It's very American's patriotic cell-phone loving duty to do so!
Don't forget to download our FREE weather/news/mindcontrol app+adware that coincidently requires you to buy a completely new glorious smart phone! (Kerchunk! burnburnburn....)