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How much power does a 5G base station consume compared to a 4G? From what I understand, more stations will be needed for this technology. The European Union ha
by lcam84 6y ago
How much power does a 5G base station consume compared to a 4G? From what I understand, more stations will be needed for this technology.
The European Union has been talking about digitisation and green new deal for economic recovery, but investing in 5G means spending a lot of materials on both stations and mobile phones. It can also mean an increase in energy consumption for both stations and mobile phones.
It seems to me that the two objectives may conflict with each other.
- nopzor 6y agofrom what i've heard, 5g base stations definitely consume significantly more power, on average. but on a "per bit moved" basis, they are more power efficient.
- lcam84 6y agoThe question is, do we really need more bandwidth? What I see is that we're already swamped with the amount of information reaching our cell phones. Our attention is also a limited resource.
- pg-gadfly 6y agoI think people often misunderstand how bandwidth (and generally any utilization) works. It's not about using 10% of the speed for some time, but using 100% of it for a fraction. You're practically always bottlenecked by transfer. Major improvement is latency, which not only enhances existing application experience significantly, makes development easier by removing lots of concern, but it also enables completely new tech that has been stopped because of the latency profile of earlier tech. What you're propably thinking of is the smallest use case like a webpage (which can still significantly be sped up) or a video. But have you though about loading several GiB sized app for just product demonstration purposes on the fly? The things fast connections enable can be hard to even imagine. You could have an entire VR/AR experience where-ever you are
- lcam84 6y agoBandwidth or transfer the idea remains. We already have a very short attention span and we have many companies fighting for this finite resource.For example, we have companies that are using casino strategies in games for children. Increasing the speed of the hardware can bring advances but it can also exacerbate the problems that we are already feeling with this hyperconnectivity.
- pg-gadfly 6y agoIncreasing the responsiveness of everything should have the exact opposite effect, because attention is most affected by latency. If you're always immediately getting what you're looking for immediately you can't be distracted either.
- rowawey 6y agoThat's magical thinking. The gas will expand to fill the container. People will use it as much but download more.
- pg-gadfly 6y agoIncreasing attention available should be good regardless of how it would be used, even the worst-case scenario would be where we are now, only we get more done
- pulse7 6y agoIsn't the additional energy consumed also increasing the EM radiation levels?
- sk0g 6y agoIt's not harmful to life, so where's the problem in that?
- dmos62 6y agoIs there already a concensus that there's no biological response?
- pg-gadfly 6y agoBehavior of microwaves is well-understood yes. Proving a negative would be rather difficult however, much like I find it hard to prove that no magical gnome exists at the bottom of my well, or that there is no renaissance-era teapot floating at the other side of our solar system perpendicular to our planet.
- im3w1l-alt 6y agoWhat we all want to hear is that they blasted some poor animals with radiation their whole lives and nothing happened. And that they exposed people for a few years to no ill effects. You know kinda like they do for new medicines.
- pg-gadfly 6y agoObserving complex reactions with chemicals requires much longer study than simply beaming things with microwaves. Results are nearly immediate, and any long term effect would have to be shared with everything else that warms things.
- dkdk8283 6y agoUsing more energy isn’t bad. It will drive efficiency improvements such as achieving a higher PUE via liquid cooling
- dmos62 6y agoWell, inefficiency in a way does promote efficiency, since it's inherently bad, but that doesn't make it... good.
- lcam84 6y agoGains in efficiency normally cause increases in consumption: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox We should focus on how not to get into this paradox.
- rowawey 6y agoThat's not a reasoned argument. More energy... greater carbon footprint... faster climate change.
- odc 6y ago"the industry consensus is that 5G will double to triple energy consumption for mobile operators" - https://www.fiercewireless.com/tech/5g-base-stations-use-a-lot-more-energy-than-4g-base-stations-says-mtn https://www.fiercewireless.com/tech/5g-base-stations-use-a-l... Needless to say that ecologists see the 5G deployment as utter madness, especially since, in their view, 4G is good enough.
- Zealotux 6y agoI've yet to read a compelling argument in favor of large-scale 5G deployment, and I'm far from being anti-tech. Except for self-driving cars, I suppose.
- rsynnott 6y agoMore efficient use of spectrum. LTE spectrum is already overloaded in many places.
- pg-gadfly 6y agoLatency benefits would enable many new realtime applications both in business and consumer end and speed up many existing ones so they'd be much less janky to use, and thus more accessible to people. It's impossible to see all the future exploits the new technology allows. All the things we do are built upon other existing ideas, moving to higher speed, lower latency connection is another step in progress. Think about being able to download several GiB application on the fly just to view a demo for a house, or get the schematics for what you're viewing in realtime with AR
- Arbalest 6y agoThere's a reason China is so keen on it (let's not get on the state surveillence bandwagon yet). Their population and population density is consistently high in so many cities, that they face contention problems more than anyone else. If we're talking relatively sparse cities found in many places around the world, then no, the extra local capacity is probably not in high demand. I would bet that 5G has cut down base stations which operate similarly to 4G, but the option to not use a new generation only works for maybe 1 generation before it gets too far behind. Data consumption is still going up after all, and some countries (such as Australia) have already mandated the shutdown of older generations, with 2G switched off to refarm spectrum, and 3G scheduled for switch off.
- rsynnott 6y agoIt looks like a site may consume about 20kW. This sounds like a good bit, and is more than an LTE mast, but you have to keep in mind that it’s much less than a car and about equivalent to two electric showers. From a societal energy usage point of view it’s irrelevant.
- mikekchar 6y ago20 kW in what period of time? 20 kW in a year is nothing. 20 kW in a second is quite a lot. Edit: Facepalm!
- rsynnott 6y agoA watt is a measure of power, not energy.
- quietbritishjim 6y agoI think you're thinking of kWh, which are kilowatt hours. In which case, the answer is 20 kWh per hour.
- pg-gadfly 6y agoDepending on how many people a single point serves, it can imply a pretty sizeable chunk of energy. Smaller things add up when you're talking of hundreds of millions of people
- lcam84 6y agoThanks for the information. I know there are other things that consume more energy, but this is indicative of Jevons' paradox. When we have the choice between efficiency and productivity we choose the second. We could be replacing 4G technology with one with the same speed but less energy consumption, but that would never make economic sense. In my opinion resource efficiency is not an irrelevant goal but a goal contrary to this society. We must always consume more because otherwise there is no growth. Without that there is no creation of jobs and profits. The goals of the economy are opposite to those of ecology. The first is to produce as much as possible. It is no wonder that carbon emissions have only actually been reduced when there has been an economic decline. Now we are going to revitalise the economy with the green new deal, but if it is really efficient it will not generate profits or jobs. So it will only make the situation worse. I think 5G is another desperate measure to maintain this infinite growth in a world of finite resources.