Study of ventilation cooling technology for telecommunication base stations in Guangzhou

Telecommunication base stations (TBSs) in Guangzhou, China are used in large numbers, and have high heat density, a long cooling season and high energy consumption. To make full use of natural outdoor cooling resources, a new ventilation cooling technology (VCT) is proposed. As the heat from the telecommunication equipment can be dissipated directly by outdoor cold air, the runtime of the air conditioners can be shortened by VCT, resulting in notable energy savings. Based on field investigation of a typical TBS, VCT was studied systematically. The results show that the application of VCT to the TBSs in Guangzhou is feasible, the energy saving for VCT is about 49% and the payoff period is less than two years. Obvious economic and social benefits will be achieved, provided that VCT can be broadly applied. Also, computational fluid dynamics simulation results indicate that optimization of airflow organization has a strong influence on heat dissipation efficiency for VCT.