Energy management is no longer a nice to have, it is imperative for meeting the rising cost of energy and the concerns of customers around the environment. Energy management solutions are available, but how can operators assure performance at all times – and in unexpected situations, like power outages?

The 5G infrastructure enhances connectivity with significantly faster speeds, ultra-low latency and improved efficiency. It has also been designed to reduce energy and power consumption.

But the complexity of today’s grids also makes it imperative to ensure performance levels before, during, and after expected and unexpected power outages in order to meet SLAs at all times.

Energy costs for network operations are rising

In the past, operators have focused purely on assuring performance, bandwidth, and capacity, while optimising energy conservation and management has often been seen as a nice-to-have rather than an essential. However, energy can cost up to 5 percent of revenue, before recent price hikes, notes McKinsey, while GSMA research puts that figure at between 20% and 40% of a telecoms company’s OPEX.

It means that balancing energy management with optimum performance, and meeting SLAs at all times has become imperative. Especially with the rising importance of Corporate Social Responsibility, as consumers look for providers of all types to be aware of environmental concerns and climate change.

While 5G is inherently more efficient than 4G LTE networks, the increased traffic and capacity it brings, the requirement for a greater density of base stations, and the processing demands of network slices and mission-critical edge computing applications mean that the energy footprint is growing, regardless of the increased energy efficiency – already the footprint of mobile networks accounts for as much as 3% of all current global need. That is not to mention the rising cost of energy. All this needs to occur while maintaining optimum levels of QoS and QoE.

To reduce energy consumption many mobile (and fixed) operators utilise energy management solutions to conserve energy and reduce costs. Typically, these will power networks down during low usage or off-peak periods, such as at night, or alternatively ramp up performance during events, for example. Often, these solutions demand or utilise automation.

But there may also be unexpected situations – like that recently in Spain, which left mobile subscribers with severely degraded service over the course of a day. Ensuring efficient return to service in such situations — and even simulating such events to test contingency planning — is a must.

Assuring performance during and after expected and unexpected power changes is essential

What is essential, however, is that during all times performance parameters are met. So, for example, return to service (RTS) – which could be after intended downtime or unexpected outages – should be predictable every time, and should instantaneously return to prior and demanded performance requirements.

It means that network performance, and the results of energy management policies (such as powering down during periods of low traffic), must be monitored on a continuous basis.

Emblasoft Evolver enables automated test plans that can monitor all aspects of the network regardless of status. It supports performance measurement before, during, and after any changes in network power supply. Automated threshold alerts and alarms can also autonomously provide warnings so that remedial action can be taken before it impacts the customer.

Evolver can also query the servers hosting the User Plane Function (UPF) to obtain CPU usage and power consumption data. So, as operators seek to manage energy as a KPI, while delivering SLAs, Evolver enables them to check that performance is as expected while using efficient power management solutions.

To find out how Emblasoft Evolver can help you ensure optimum energy efficiency and performance simultaneously, download our new paper by clicking here.