INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Cabling
Osama Abed, Technical Manager
(Gulf, Middle East, East and South
Africa), Nexans Cabling Solutions
How can the energy efficiency
standards of cabling infrastructure
been judged?
Paul Cave, Technical Pre-Sales
Manager, Excel
In reality the cabling system is passive
and therefore energy efficiency
doesn’t really come into it. That said
the structured cabling can contribute
significantly to the energy efficiency
of the building environment by acting
as the transport medium for remote
powering, or Power over Ethernet.
PoE is a much more efficient way of
powering a whole range of devices that
are now deployed within buildings.
CCTV cameras, Access Control, Lighting
Controllers etc. can all be connected
over the structured cabling and powered
using PoE at various levels.
This leads to significant overall power
savings, with a typical power draw of
eight watts, a study reported in 2012 that
the power saving from the 100 million
devices deployed would lead to 61m KWh
of energy savings per year. DC powering
at source is far more efficient than trying
to convert the power at the device.
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INTELLIGENTCIO
powered by
Paul Cave, Technical Pre-Sales Manager, Excel
Narender Vasandani, RCDD,
technical manager Middle East and
India at Siemon
PoE lighting and other remote
powering equipment will operate
more efficiently and have lower
operating expenditure (OPEX) when
deployed over cabling exhibiting lower
DC resistance. Siemon recommends
deployment of shielded category 6A
and category 7A cabling optimum
to support 60W and higher remote
powering applications to minimise
temperature rise within bundled cables,
support operation in higher ambient
temperatures without the need for
channel length de-rating, minimise
power losses and maximise efficiency.
Osama Abed, Technical Manager
(Gulf, Middle East, East and South
Africa), Nexans Cabling Solutions
Energy efficiency is becoming more
important as new IT technologies
emerge, where many work groups and
standard bodies are taking energy
efficiency into consideration towards
building Green IT environments. In the
IT industry, energy efficiency is usually
considered in the design of new power
efficient active equipment, including
servers, switches, and others.
However, it is also important to
consider the efficiency of the structured
cabling systems since they do
contribute to the energy savings. To
illustrate this concept, we can have a
look at the PoE technologies, where end
devices are being powered via the data
copper cables.
This transfer of power will result in
heating which will dissipate into the IT
environment, and will contribute to the
efficiency of the power being delivered
to the end devices.
Vendors take this into consideration
when developing their cabling solutions,
where optimisation in the cabling
system design of components can assist
in delivering better power levels to the
end devices without much loss, which
contributes to lowering the power losses
and in more efficient dissipation of heat.
This will eventually result in conserving
more energy, and contribute to more
efficient Green IT systems. n
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