What is the electricity price for 5g base stations

The current 200,000 base stations can save 1.2 billion annually. By the end of this year, 1 million 5G base stations will be built, saving 6 billion in a year. If there are more than 2 million base stations, 12 billion electricity can be saved a year, which is equivalent to China Unicom's total profit in one year.

Selected 5G base stations in China are being powered off every day from 21:00 to next day 9:00 to reduce energy consumption and lower electricity bills. 5G base stations are truly large consumers of energy such that electricity bills have become one of the biggest costs for 5G network operators.

The power consumption of a single 5G station is 2.5 to 3.5 times higher than that of a single 4G station. The main factor behind this increase in 5G power consumption is the high power usage of the active antenna unit (AAU). Under a full workload, a single station uses nearly 3700W.

By the end of 1st Half of 2020, the three major Chinese mobile network operators, including China Mobile, China Unicom, and China Telecom, had built more than 250,000 5G base stations in China. This number is projected to reach 600,000 by the end of this year, with network coverage in prefecture-level cities in China.

Although the absolute value of the power consumption of 5G base stations is increasing, their energy efficiency ratio is much lower than that of 4G stations. In other words, with the same power consumption, the network capacity of 5G will be as dozens of times larger than 4G, so the power consumption per bit is sharply reduced.

Because no matter where you live in any community, there are densely packed base stations. There are 50 base stations in one square kilometer, and you can't avoid them. At that time, the street lamps, power poles and billboards you saw were probably 5G base stations in disguise. There is no way to avoid it.