Investigation On Distributed Cooling System For Telecommunication Base Station

With the proportion of annual power consumption of base station in the whole telecommunication industry increasing year by year, the energy-saving of base station has become a hot issue in the telecommunication industry. The energy consumption of air conditioning system is a major component of the base station energy consumption contributing40%-46%in2009, which has great potential for energy-saving. Therefore, energy-saving design of air conditioning system is of great significance for the energy-saving of the whole telecommunication industry.Distributed cooling system is a novel efficient cooling system for telecommunication base station, which applies object-oriented cooling concept to the cooling system and provides cold directly to the telecommunication equipment. Compared with traditional methods, distributed cooling system can ignore unnecessary head load and optimize the airflow in the base station. It can not only enhance the utilization efficiency of cooling capacity but also improve the performance of refrigeration equipment under the premise of ensuring safe and reliable operation of the equipment, resulting in significant energy saving.A distributed cooling system was designed for a typical telecommunication base station. Its performance was test using enthalpy difference method. The simulation model of base station and its air conditioning system was established with TRNSYS. The rationality of the model was verified via the comparison of analog values and test values of the cabinet’s hourly temperature through the same time period. Using this model, the annual power consumption of air conditioning system in base station can be worked out. And then the power-saving rate of air conditioning system can be calculated. Select nearly30benchmarking base stations located in10provinces in China, the power-saving rate of which was test. The test results show that the distributed cooling system has significant energy-saving effect within the scope of the test base stations. And the factors affecting the power-saving rate were analyzed according to the test results.The numerical model of base station was established using CFD, through which the distribution of the temperature field and velocity field in base station was calculated. The airflows of base station using the traditional air condition and the distributed cooling system separately was analyzed comparatively. The simulation results of airflow further validate the cooling effect of the distributed cooling system. On the other hand, the energy-saving reasons of the distributed cooling system were analyzed from the perspective of airflow in base station.