DENVER–Striving to chop energy costs, protect the environment, and placate increasingly demanding regulators, major North American cable operators are starting to take steps to cut power consumption and carbon emissions.
In a “green” general session staged here at last week’s SCTE Cable-Tec Expo 2009, executives from four large MSOs and two prominent cable trade groups spelled out ways that cable providers are beginning to reduce their carbon footprints. They also discussed promising measures that cable operators can adopt to cut pollution further in the future.
D’Arcy Brown, director of optical transport and facilities, network planning group, for Rogers Cable Communications, said his company is moving forward on several environmental-friendly fronts. The list of green initiatives includes hydrogen fuel cells, innovative heat-exchange technologies, and a new dispatching system.
“We’re now looking at the problems we have and trying to solve them with green solutions,” Brown said. “This is simple stuff we all know. It doesn’t have to be fancy.”
For instance, Rogers is looking at replacing the costly network batteries in its national backbone network with small-scale hydrogen fuel cells. In Oshawa, just outside Toronto, the MSO is now testing the use of the fuel cells in coordination with the local fire department, which has substantial experience with hydrogen cells. Brown said such coordination is important because many municipalities, fearing a Hindenburg-type disaster, are queasy about the use of hydrogen gas as a fuel source.
“It looks pretty promising,” Brown said. “I don’t think we’ll save money on hydrogen now. But theoretically there will be operational savings over 10 to 15 years. And we believe we’ll get environmental benefits.”
In another prime example, Rogers is trying out the Kyoto Cooling system in one of its two new, 8,000-square-feet data centers in Toronto. Under this system, a 12-foot rotary wheel, half of which sits inside the building and half outside, carries out hot air from the building and cools things off without letting any contaminants inside. Brown said Rogers is the first company in North America, and one of just five companies in the world, to deploy this innovative heat-exchange method.
On paper, Brown noted, “there are really no short-term benefits.” But, he said, with gas costs rising steadily, “I believe we’ll get payback sooner” than the 15 years assumed by the company’s energy planners.
In the U.S., Comcast is seeking to trim energy costs by deploying Energy Star-approved digital cable set-top boxes that consume less power than traditional ones. Each Energy Star-certified set-top box uses about 5 watts to 10 watts less electricity than the standard cable set-top, cutting the power bills of customers and especially the bills of the utilities that serve them.
“It’s not a big difference to the individual homeowner’s power bill,” said Richard Kirsche, director of digital set-top box hardware design and development for Comcast.
“But, when you’re talking 10,000 homes, it saves megawatt hours. It matters to the power company and it matters to the universe.”
Kirsche said Comcast is also “transitioning” its fleet of 40,000 cars and trucks to more efficient, lighter-weight vehicles over the next few years. With hundreds of hybrid vehicles already on the road, he estimated that the MSO saved 68,000 gallons of gas last year. “There’s money to be saved for the corporation,” he said.
William Check, senior vice president of science and technology for the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA), urged all cable operators to follow Comcast’s lead and invest in Energy Star boxes. Although the Energy Star program, backed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), is strictly voluntary for cable providers right now, he warned that it probably won’t stay that way for long.
Alan Breznick is a Toronto-based senior analyst at Heavy Reading, part of the Light Reading Communications Network. He helped cover last week’s SCTE Cable-Tec Expo for Cartt.ca.
