5G Electric Industry Applications

While the electrical industry accelerates digitalization efforts, 5G and information communication technologies (ICT) offer vertical industries the option to increase efficiency and cut carbon emissions for the ultimate smart grid. 5G plans  to build end-to-end green energy networks by introducing temperature efficient technologies, eliminating diesel generators, and cloud-based intelligent network management.

In a recent Huawei press release, the company details the success it had applying its 5G Electrical Power Virtual Private Network solution to China Mobile for China Southern Power Grid (CSPG) which provides electricity to most of the city of Shenzhen, a total service area of 1,953 sq kilometers and a customer base of 3.05 million.

At a component level, Huawei intendeds to reduce carbon emissions with its 98 percent efficient rectifier in combination with heat resistant materials and phase change cooling temperature control to help save 5,000 kWh of electricity per site annually. At sites, operators could save at least 50 percent on energy by following its six recommended measures. Lastly, it purports that cloud based intelligent network management allows for intelligent network-wide coordination between mains supply, power supply system’s energy storage and loads. This particular function allows for precision energy efficiency management and energy consumption optimization at sites across the whole network.

Peng Jianhua, President of Huawei Telecom Energy, says that he Huawei Digital Power has four major area of focus: photovoltaics, telecom energy, data center energy and automotive. The Electrical solution applied in CSPG was mature and tailored with in an in-depth understanding of industry requirements. Namely, it deployed flagship application, promoted key technologies optimized the basic design, accelerated standardization and developed a robust ecosystem. It did so by combining the power of 5G with cutting-edge technologies, such as network slicing and edge computing so that horizontal zones could be isolated and yet vertically secured with a well authentication mechanism.

In practice, it used private network WAN, to keep full network coverage for power distribution and consumption whilst using LANs for better power generation and transformation systems in specific areas. Overall, this holistic approach was led not only to energy conservation, emission reduction and increased efficiency, but also it has reduced secondary losses by booting voltage, increasing end-to-end efficiency by three percent. However, as recognized by Huawei, adding 5G to sites will bring a series of challenges to the power supply infrastructure that it might not be ready for, including insufficient mains grid capacity, power capacity, and battery back up to name a few.

For energy producers in Mexico, 5G may be an attractive prospect, especially because the country lacks infrastructure both in the national energy grid and broad band needed to support 5G, the probability of domestic application is beyond 2025. If Mexico intends to import these capabilities, they must first work on its aging transmission and distribution infrastructure. MBN expert contributor Federico Hernández, says Mexico needs more spectrum, new equipment and networks, devices and technologies to deploy 5G capacity. Overall, Mexico has much work ahead of itself, but it will also allow the proposed technologies to mature and scale up so that it can support Mexico City’s 8.8 million ever growing population.