On March 4th, Jiangsu’s first “5G+ Smart Charging Pile” was put into operation at a Fast Charging Station of Yangzhou, Jiangsu. The charging pile integrates car charging, 5G micro-station, smart lighting and video surveillance into one. It functions as a multi-purpose pile which effectively saves land resources, reduces construction costs, and facilitates the construction of new infrastructure in smart cities.
In recent years, China State Grid has seized the opportunity to integrate energy revolution and digital revolution. As a result, a new “5G + power” win-win ecosystem has been established. As early as 2019, State Grid Jiangsu company took the lead in opening up basic power resources like power towers and transformer substations to market players such as tower companies and telecom operators in the country, creating a batch of innovative products such as 5G base integrated lightning rods and enhanced power tower terminal for 5G sharing. Through this new sharing model, resources such as land, pipelines, and electricity will be integrated to reduce the cost of 5G network deployment.
The deployment of 5G micro-stations on charging piles is another practice of State Grid in assisting the construction of 5G networks. “Previously, the construction of a 5G micro-station costs over 100,000 yuan on average, while the construction of a 5G micro-station on the smart charging pile only needs an investment of 29,000 yuan, which is about 70% less and occupies no additional land resources.” said Yu Xiang, director of the Internet Science and Technology Department of the Yangzhou company of State Grid. He introduced that such smart charging piles occupy less land and offer more functions and costs less money, while serving the public and municipalities.
According to Zhou Yong, a director of Jiangsu Yangzhou Branch of China Tower, said, compared with traditional macro base stations built on towers, 5G micro base stations have the characteristics of smaller size, lower power consumption, ccupying less space, and offering more sharing possibility. In the past, due to the high signal frequency band of 5G, more micro-stations need to be deplyed, as a result of which site selection, land use and availability of electricity have become big problems.”
Since 2016, EV charging stations have grown in an explosive way in Jiangsu. According to statistics from the Jiangsu Provincial Department of Industry and Information Technology, as of the end of 2020, there were more than 100,000 charging piles in Jiangsu.” The densely distributed urban charging piles can solve the problem of site selection and high cost for micro-station construction.” Zhou Yong said.
“At present, we are gradually transforming the existing charging piles into ‘5G+ smart charging piles’. Next, we will cooperate with the municipal planning department in combining charging stations with “5G” throughout the province.” said Zhao Yue with State Grid’s Jiangsu company. At the same time, the company will further explore the possibility of resource sharing in site election, pipe trenches digging, and optical cables layout, not only sharing traditional physical resources,but also sharing Internet business, to make its contribution in building an energy ecology of sharing.
