Remote - Summer 2012 - (Page 8)

Feature Article Multi-Tenant Power Metering and Management Ben Stump, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer Kentrox The telecommunications landscape continues to evolve. With a continued decrease in average revenue per user (ARPU), a massive increase in data traffic and a decline in new subscriber growth, costs have the potential to outpace revenue in the coming years. As service providers are forced to manage more projects with less operating expense and fewer resources, they are being forced into new business models. Some service providers are adjusting their cost profile by outsourcing more of their business. This has led to massive growth opportunities for tower providers. Tower providers are increasing their footprint and now offering a managed service to service providers in addition to renting real estate. This has led to tower providers that must manage the common site infrastructure including commercial and backup power, often for multiple tenants. Understanding the market landscape is critical to understanding why service providers are gaining value with this shift towards outsourcing even more activity. Figure 1 shows the market conditions that are moving service providers beyond just thinking of coverage and availability to spending more time and money in capacity expansion to support the growing data service demands. In addition, deployments have also shifted from managing hardware and software to managing applications, where service providers can start to demand a premium price to customers. With the shifting landscape, service providers have been in a transition from owning and operating their towers to leasing the facilities and even outsourcing the management of tower’s and support infrastructure. This transition is driving tower providers to intelligent site management and control to manage their costs, customer service level agreements (SLAs) and growth. For a complete view of the power landscape, the tower provider must have a voltage meter to monitor the availability of commercial power. From there, an power meter must be added to track the amount of power that is consumed by the site as a whole. Understanding when the generator is in use is critical; therefore a voltage meter must be used to determine when the generator is running in case commercial power fails. A current switch can also be added to determine the position of the automatic transfer switch. Now that power to the site is being monitored and managed, the most complex part for tower providers is the ability to specifically monitor and meter each tenant’s power and energy consumption. Figure 2 shows the power connections and the placement requirements for the individual tenant power meters. The power meters must be leveraged to segment the power consumption by tenant and provide for troubleshooting and analysis capabilities. Figure 2 Figure 1 As the tower provider footprint expands, the complexity in understanding site conditions grows. While tower providers are not responsible for monitoring or managing the traffic bearing electronics, they are now becoming responsible for all of the support infrastructure and the site conditions. One of the most difficult requirements is monitoring the actual tower assets (generators, batteries, tower light operation, etc) and more importantly, knowing how to accurately bill each tenant for the energy they specifically use. These are new requirements facing tower providers who traditionally have focused on leasing real estate and monitoring tower lights. The most critical aspect for tower providers is providing power for tenants. While this sounds easy, it is actually very complex and must incorporate not only commercial power management, but the management of the entire power infrastructure, including backup power (e.g. generator, battery plants and alternative energy sources) and the actual tenant power and their specific consumption. A proper management solution must provide insight to monitor and manage the infrastructure for the total power of the site. In addition to monitoring power, the infrastructure must also be controlled to gain efficiencies and limit the number of physical site visits required. 8 www.RemoteMagazine.com The actual tenant power meters can provide individual tenant power consumption. However, just knowing the consumption is not enough for tower providers to support their needs and SLAs. In addition to tenant power consumption, it is important to understand the tenant power distribution by phase. A complete solution will provide for per phase measurements such as voltage, current and power factor. This provides the information required to distribute the tenant power by phase for load balancing and growth purposes. Additionally, it provides the information and analysis tool necessary to troubleshoot any potential power problems directly at the tenant level. While troubleshooting and managing the tenant power consumption and health is critical, it is also imperative for a tower provider’s continued financial success to charge their tenants for their individual power consumption. In most regions of the world, this is not as simple as applying a charge to the total kWh usage for the tenant. Instead, there are varying costs of providing the power. Power provided from the commercial power grid has a different cost profile than power provided from the generator or battery plant and therefore must be tracked, maintained, and billed differently. To make it more complex, there are usually tariff tables that have variable costs associated to power used at different times of day and days of the week. Once a power management solution provides detailed tenant power analysis based on time of day/week and source (commercial, generator and battery plant for example), a successful solution will then maintain this data in a centralized management system and overlay the data with the tariff rates to provide detailed billing reports for the tower providers. http://www.RemoteMagazine.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Remote - Summer 2012

Remote - Summer 2012
Remote Monitoring in Data Centers Progresses with Emerging DCiM Systems
Multi-Tenant Power Metering and Management
Addressing Cyber Security Vulnerabilities in the Power Grid Infrastructure
Unbreakable SCADA Security: Protecting Hydrocarbon Facilities And Pipeline Networks
Building Networks in Pakistan’s Extreme Environments Puts Remote Management to the Test
In the Flow - Water Treatment & Distribution at Super-Rimiez Plant
SCADA
Networking
Security
Onsite Power
Environmental Monitoring
Industry News
Reducing Maintenance and Energy Costs of Substations with Automation

Remote - Summer 2012