Managing projected power outage at mobile radio base sites

1. A power management method comprising:

projecting the likelihood that a power outage will occur at a mobile radio base site over some future interval by using:

a projection of power that will be available to a mobile radio base station over the future interval; and

a projection of power that will be consumed by loads at the mobile radio base site over the future interval, the likelihood of the power outage being determined by whether or not projected available power is greater than projected consumed power; and

in the event that the power outage is expected, invoking actions to prolong a period for which the mobile radio base station at the mobile radio base site provides service.

2. The power management method of claim 1 , in which the action invoked is to raise an alarm on an Operational Support System.

3. The power management method of claim 1 , in which the action invoked is to reduce power requirements of the mobile radio base site.

4. The power management method of claim 3 , in which the action invoked is to reduce traffic being carried in a cell.

5. The power management method of claim 4 , in which the traffic in the cell is reduced by shrinking a coverage area of the cell to establish a reduced coverage area.

6. The power management method of claim 5 , in which the reduced coverage area is compensated by an increase in the coverage area provided by adjacent cells.

7. The power management method of claim 4 , in which the traffic in the cell is reduced by modifying handover OSS parameters to encourage a handover of traffic to other base stations on a same system as the mobile radio base station.

8. The power management method of claim 4 , in which the traffic in the cell is reduced by modifying handover OSS parameters to encourage the handover of traffic to base stations on a different system.

9. The power management method of claim 4 , in which the traffic in the cell is reduced by modifying cell selection parameters of the mobile radio base station and of other base stations in a vicinity.

10. The power management method of claim 4 , in which the traffic in the cell is reduced by modifying cell re-selection parameters of the mobile radio base station and of other base stations in a vicinity.

11. The power management method of claim 1 , in which the action invoked is to reduce a number of sectors supported by the mobile radio base station.

12. The power management method of claim 1 , in which the action invoked is to prevent admission to the cells under the control of the mobile radio base site for calls with low priority.

13. The power management method of claim 1 , in which the action invoked is to drop low priority calls in the cells under control of the mobile radio base site.

14. The power management method of claim 1 , in which the action invoked is to reduce a data rate supported for services in cells under control of the mobile radio base site.

15. The power management method of claim 1 , where the expectation of the power which will be consumed by the base station site equipment over some future period is derived using historical data gathered under similar conditions, where similar conditions could include but not be limited to time of day, day of week and day of the year.

16. The power management method of claim 1 , where the expectation of power to be consumed is derived from historical values which have been optionally modified to account for any changes in average traffic load between the considered future period and a time of a historical record, brought about by changes in subscriber numbers, changes in network usage or changes in tariffs.

17. The power management method of claim 1 , wherein the projection of power to be available comprises power available from renewable energy sources over some future period which is calculated by taking into account meteorological information obtained from a weather station situated at the cell site.

18. The power management method of claim 1 , wherein the projection of power to be available comprises power available from renewable energy sources over some future period which is calculated using meteorological information obtained from a 3rd party server which supplies weather forecast data.

19. A power management method according to claim 17 , wherein localized weather data, collected from weather stations collocated with base stations is used to enhance regional weather forecasts collected from meteorological information servers.

20. A power management method according to claim 1 , wherein the invoked actions are scheduled to take effect during low subscriber usage periods or during low revenue generation periods.

21. The power management method of claim 4 , in which the reduction in traffic being carried in the cell enables one or more electronic circuits in the mobile radio base station to be switched off.