Spotlight on Green Telecom | TelecomDrive.com
With an aim to protecting environment, Huawei Digital Power is implementing an open ecosystem strategy that drives hardware and software and promotes multi-layer collaboration across the industry. Huawei is collaborating with like-minded partners to upgrade the energy industry and facilitate an open and symbiotic digital power ecosystem that thrives on shared success. Huawei Digital Power is looking forward to helping carriers improve efficiency and smarten up facilities with the help of its innovations.
Sarad Shrestha, Director – Sales, Huawei Telecommunications India Co. Pvt. Ltd. Speaks with Zia Askari from TelecomDrive.com about how Huawei is contributing towards protecting environment.
How does Huawei contribute to environmental protection and carbon neutrality?
Currently, the world’s most important goal is the global fight against climate change. Cutting down on fossil fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions has become imperative. Keeping this in mind, Huawei’s Digital Power business is committed to integrating digital and power electronics technologies, developing clean power, and enabling energy digitalization to drive energy revolution for a better, greener future.
Huawei Digital Power is implementing an open ecosystem strategy that opens hardware and software and promotes multi-layer collaboration across the industry. Huawei is collaborating with like-minded partners to upgrade the energy industry and facilitate an open and symbiotic digital power ecosystem that thrives on shared success.
To build a smart and sustainable world, Huawei Digital Power aims at helping carriers improve efficiency and smarten up facilities. Our solutions assist both telecom and tower carriers simplify facility deployment, enhance power reliability, increase energy efficiency, and make O&M smart, enable ICT networks to evolve to 5G and cloud smoothly.
Huawei pursues innovations in clean power generation, energy digitalization, transportation electrification, green ICT power infrastructure, and integrated smart energy. We are collaborating with our customers and partners around the world to advance the digital power industry, and build low-carbon households, buildings, factories, campuses, villages, and cities. This will encourage the shift from a low-carbon world to a carbon-neutral world.
Can you elaborate on how Huawei has accelerated the growth in digital and intelligent transformation?
Huawei has been working to digitize objects in the real world as well as business processes and rules. Records generated in traditional systems and massive amounts of signal data from various touchpoints can be translated into valuable knowledge through algorithms and AI to better inform operations and decision-making.
Huawei has more than 50,000 process activities and more than 10,000 business control points. A conventional approach to digital transformation would be both ineffective and costly. Because of this, Huawei began more widely using AI technologies internally in 2018, and established the AI Enabling Dept under its Quality, Business Process & IT Mgmt Dept. This new department uses AI technologies to increase internal efficiency, especially in repetitive, high-volume, and complex tasks.
Huawei’s digital-intelligent transformation consulting services have brought successful practices to carriers’ transformation. For example, Huawei helped a carrier build a marketing transformation framework, and finally improved marketing efficiency and effectiveness by using digital-intelligent methods such as automatic grid digital operation and channel convergence.
How is Huawei Making low-carbon buildings and campuses a reality with its integrated smart energy solution and services?
Cities are now speedily adopting a shift towards becoming low carbon. Huawei Digital Power works with customers and partners to build low-carbon buildings and campuses, and low-carbon cities, through top-level carbon consulting services, integration of power generation, grids, loads, and storage, as well as the Dual-carbon Co-Mind.
Huawei Digital Power’s new AntoHill campus in Shenzhen is currently under construction and is expected to open in 2022. This campus will have nearly zero carbon footprint that combines PV generation, energy storage, direct current distribution, and flexible electricity use. Once up and running, this campus will generate approximately 1.5 million kWh of green power each year. Energy saving technology and integrated energy management will cut annual electricity consumption and carbon emissions by 51% and 63% respectively.
Huawei’s integrated smart energy solutions leverage energy infrastructure such as smart PV & storage, charging networks, smart lighting, and smart cooling to achieve optimal system performance. According to the best practices, they deliver nearly 20% gain in energy efficiency, slash energy use costs by about 10%, and shorten the payback period by about 25%. In addition to this, Huawei has actively participated in the formulation of ultra-low-energy building standards and related policies, the company has also launched pilot projects in support of Shenzhen’s efforts to establish zones with near zero carbon footprint.
In line with Huawei’s corporate philosophy of protecting the environment, its Bengaluru campus was designed and built as a green building, adopting eco-friendly design and practices. Some of the highlights of the campus are:
- Fully cloud-computing based environment to reduce energy consumption.
- Solar power and natural lighting
- Rainwater harvesting, sewage treatment plant, waste management
- Eco-friendly glazing to reduce air-conditioning
- Energy efficient motors, DG sets, Chillers
- 65% open space
What is the history of the Huawei’s digital power business? Can you tell us about Huawei’s R&D in the digital power domain?
Huawei started out as a company that specialized in communications equipment, and the company’s digital power business originally focused on powering communications equipment. To meet customers’ demands for integrated energy solutions and carriers’ needs for energy saving and emissions reduction, we called upon our years of experience in digital and power electronics technologies to establish a Network Energy Product Line in 2011. This product line developed a range of solutions, including smart PV solutions, data center facility solutions, and site power facility solutions. In 2020, this product line was renamed the Digital Power Product Line. In June 2021, Huawei Digital Power Technologies Co., Ltd. was formally established.
Huawei Digital Power covers business domains including Smart PV, Data Center Facility, Site Power Facility, DriveONE, Embedded Power, and Integrated Smart Energy. It operates 12 R&D centers across the world and holds more than 1,600 patents (by the end of 2021). With approximately 6,000 employees, 60% of whom are focused on R&D, Huawei Digital Power serves one third of the world’s population across more than 170 countries and regions.
By integrating digital and power electronics technologies, we have launched five smart PV & storage solutions that address three application scenarios: power generation, energy storage, and energy consumption. The five solutions are: Smart PV&ESS Generator, Smart String Energy Storage System, C&I Smart PV Solution, Residential Smart PV Solution, and Smart Micro-grid Solution.
What change will Huawei bring to the energy sector and its storage aspect with its digital technologies?
According to the World Economic Forum, ICT is expected to support other industries in cutting carbon emissions by 12.1 billion tons by 2030, with more than 1.8 billion tons of this being in the energy sector alone. Huawei Digital Power integrates and innovates on digital, power electronics, and heat technologies to manage watts with bits and help customers conserve energy and cut emissions. By the end of 2021, Huawei Digital Power had helped customers generate 482.9 billion kWh of green power and save about 14.2 billion kWh of electricity. These efforts have resulted in a reduction of nearly 230 million tons in CO2 emissions, which is equivalent to planting 320 million trees.
Huawei is taking the following steps to create a thriving digital power ecosystem:
- Opening up hardware: As part of our greater Inside strategy, we provide core hardware products and modules to our partners in multiple ways, such as through original design manufacturers (ODMs), secondary development, and integration. We also enable partners to achieve business success and advance the energy industries in their regions.
- Opening up software: We build an open, secure, and dependable DigiPowerCloud, which enables more industry partners to develop more energy applications and implement integrated smart energy management in different scenarios.
- Multi-level collaboration across the industry: We actively participate in industry organizations to develop industry standards and alliance ecosystems, and work with global standards organizations, institutions, and think tanks to promote the formulation and implementation of relevant standards and industry policies. This will drive the healthy development of the digital power industry.
