Telecommunication equipment has always been considered as sensitive equipment and accordingly housed in controlled enclosures or shelters. However, with the many new technologies being deployed today such as broadband, wireless Internet and so forth, heat dissipation densities have been increasingly considerably, raising the possibility of heat-related failure.

Two factors have combined to change the cooling protection needs of telecommunications applications – one, the critical nature of the applications has increased. Certain operations simply can not be shut down for any reason; and two, the convergence of IT and communication networks have created a whole new communications environment and consequently a new set of challenges.

Comfort cooling has been the common cooling solution used to actively cool the internal environment of shelters to maintain the temperature at 22~25 degree Celsius, which is the temperature range that equipments and batteries most rated within. Having active cooling systems to maintain temperature low in shelters regardless of ambient air temperature (that may vary from -20~+36 degree Celsius) have resulted high utility expenses. Considered as the ‘energy spender’ in the network, cooling consumes between 25 to 35 percent of the energy in telecom infrastructure.

A Typical Telecom Shelter with Air Conditioner

Apart from high utility expenses, conventional cooling solutions present more issues such as:  

• Increased CAPEX - Extra air conditioner unit required to support round-the-clock operation and generators are required to ensure cooling system is up even when mains fail.
• Lack of Flexibility – Adding in more comfort cooling units to cool down the increasing number of equipment is no longer practical.
• Costly Maintenance/ Repair – Excessive heat can damage or impair the equipment and since comfort cooling is not designed for 24/7 operation, it is prone to breakdowns requiring costly maintenance and repair work.
• Lack of Control & Visibility – Comfort cooling units lack the intelligent controls and sophisticated monitoring that enable users to keep track of changes in the environment