Artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer a ‘nice to have’ option in business, but a ‘must have’ tool to future-proof industries. The telecommunications sector, known for its innovation and staying ahead of the curve, is still exploring the full potential of this crucial tool. AI is a set of smart, focused systems that can augment the best skills in the mobile tower industry and better manage future challenges to come. In order to adopt the level of automation AI brings at scale, there is a need to better understand AI’s role as an augmenter and enricher of current people, processes, and projects, not as a replacement.
AI is better suited to deal with peripheral and repetitive tasks that are often overlooked or put on the backburner while human workers continue to tackle operations that can more accurately be conducted by machines. Businesses that truly introspect on how much time they ask their workers to spend on sifting through granular information across spreadsheets and corresponding data points on numerous systems will find the results shocking. For every task revolved around forecasting, data assimilation, risk analysis, and a host of additional technical or administrative functions relying on human guesswork, the overarching question is: ‘why not AI?’
PowerX’s AI solution is a prime example of how AI can help clients save millions of dollars in operational savings and as much as 50% in CO2 emission savings. PowerX continuously looks at how AI can optimize power sources mix even in cases where teams of cell tower experts optimize the different power sources’ equipment and their operations using set threshold rules.
AI identifies sites where existing solar panels installed are able to generate more solar power during the course of the day than the battery capacity that exists on those sites is scheduled and able to store. AI identifies in real-time all sites with extra spare energy that it can extract out of the battery and solar assets already available on sites. By using the spare energy identified, AI also highlights the reduction of Diesel Generator (DG) runtime it can achieve.
AI identifies sites where existing solar panels installed are able to generate more solar power during the course of the day than the battery capacity that exists on those sites is scheduled and able to store. AI identifies in real-time all sites with extra spare energy that it can extract out of the battery and solar assets already available on sites. By using the spare energy identified, AI also highlights the reduction of Diesel Generator (DG) runtime it can achieve.
Without AI automation, manually configured site operations rely on set thresholds to determine the mix of power available on sites. These processes require hours of manual inputs and optimizations to squeeze optimum performance on sites. AI dynamic control is able to switch remotely in real-time the optimum power source based on multiple inputs and predictions to ensure the site remains fully autonomous at any point in time. Such real-time inputs include: assets measured capacity, weather forecasts, historical patterns, actual load, state of health, maximum autonomy available in the assets, etc.
As a result, under AI dynamic control, the lowest source of energy was chosen at all times to optimize for full site availability at the lowest cost. AI reduces significantly the diesel generator runtime as it maximizes the power available in the other energy sources installed on sites. The net effect of these optimizations results in a direct increase in the contribution made by greener power sources such as solar to power each site over time driving, therefore, continuous optimization of the cost per kWh at each site.
AI automation takes care of peripheral and repetitive tasks without fail and at a scale impossible to be achieved with human interventions. In exchange, time is freed up for manual interventions to be focused on the more difficult problem-solving tasks that only human decisions can solve. With AI-driven operations, granular site-level optimizations and automations happen in real-time, 24/7 across thousands of sites with minimum human intervention.
In conclusion, AI is no longer a luxury but a necessity to stay competitive in today’s fast-paced and innovative world. Its benefits, such as increased efficiency, accuracy, and cost savings, are evident in industries like telecommunications. With the potential to optimize existing assets and improve sustainability efforts, AI should be embraced and integrated into business models.
