➤ A new energy management initiative with goals for 2025 will be announced at the end of this year or early 2020.

➤ Artificial intelligence is an important consideration for improving reliability.

➤ Supporting mission-critical applications, such as autonomous transport, will require new power supply strategies to remove energy as a single point of failure.

Mark Dzuban, president and CEO at Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers and the International Society of Broadband Experts, or SCTE/ISBE, recently spoke to S&P Global Market Intelligence about how his organization is progressing toward energy management initiatives and how operators are leveraging AI. Below is an edited transcript of the interview. Energy 2020 is an industry initiative launched by SCTE to provide cable system operators with the energy management standards, technology innovation, organizational solutions and training to meet a set of energy efficiency goals. SCTE counts cable and telecom operators such as Comcast Corp., Charter Communications Inc. and Liberty Global Inc. as members.

S&P Global Market Intelligence: Can you give us an update on Energy 2020?

Mark Dzuban: Our hard objectives for the program are to reduce power consumption by 20% on a unit basis; reduce energy costs by 25% on a unit basis; and reduce grid dependency by 5%. In a survey later last year of operators who submitted both baseline and 2017 data, we found that the industry has: exceeded the power consumption reduction objective by more than 100%; moved more than halfway toward the energy cost reduction goal; and realized an increase in green-sourced energy that aligns with the grid dependency objective.

Your organization will launch a new energy management initiative for 2025. What should we expect that to look like?

The Energy 2020 steering committee already is asking the questions that need to be asked: What projects have been completed? What needs to be continued? What new objectives should we be laying out for ourselves? We also need to be thinking about how our energy program can support the reliability of the 10G [10 gigabit-per-second cable internet speeds the cable industry intends to bring to consumers in the coming years] services on the industry's roadmap.

We also need to look at the status of our energy storage capabilities that are critical to developing edge energy programs. How we can improve alternative sources like photovoltaics and microgrids. The development of standards around critical facilities and the power feeds that supply critical facilities. We also need to continue our work with CableLabs to reduce the power consumption of new technologies, so that we can mitigate power consumption as we deploy new services. Again, those are ideas that the steering committee is likely to consider, but they're far from the only ones.

You have not made a formal announcement for your 2025 initiative yet, right?

No. I suspect we're not going to see that until the end of this year moving into 2020.

For the 2025 initiative, what future applications will your organization take into account?

One of the big questions we need to answer is how we scale the energy strategies on our roadmap from models or proofs of concept to significant deployments. What are the next steps in implementing APSIS – the Adaptive Power Systems Interface Specification? How do we use systems like photovoltaic on a larger scale to help meet peak energy consumption? How do we reduce our costs by using hybrid systems that draw from alternative sources and the grid?

You also mentioned that part of figuring out the 2025 initiative will be figuring out how to build into 10G. What do you mean by that?

10G is about greater bandwidth, it's about heightening security, it's about reducing latency and it's about increasing reliability. The list of applications that can be delivered by 10G is phenomenal — holograms and advanced 3D educational and development information — but if I look at 10G from an energy point of view, it's really about addressing the reliability piece. If 10G is going to support biomedical devices and mission-critical applications such as autonomous transport, we can't be subject to power interruptions. We need to provide alternative methods of powering that remove energy as a single point of failure. We need to have backups that can ensure reliable availability in any kind of environment.

There is now more collaboration going on between your organization, CableLabs and NCTA [NCTA – The Internet & Television Association is a trade group that represents major pay TV players]. How has that increased collaboration had an impact on your members?

Big time. If you look at, as an example, the 10G rollout, I believe you'll see some marketing that's going to say powered by CableLabs, NCTA, SCTE and Cable Europe [a trade association for broadband cable TV operators in the European Union]. Because if you look at the execution of it, where does revenue come from? Revenue comes from operating networks that you operate to scale effectively, efficiently, and are doing their job in generating revenue and delivering a customer experience that's worthy of that revenue. So the relationship with us is to have all of our content built by CableLabs in partnership, so that the messaging on "What is 10G?" is absolutely built into our content. And then the best practices are built into that too. We have a lot of content that's done in partnership with CableLabs, so our members get the real scoop.

How are your member companies using AI?

AI is an important consideration relative to how we improve reliability. Think about the ability for the network to switch automatically to alternative sources if the continuity of the main power supply is in jeopardy. When do you switch to batteries? What are the battery levels? When do you go to photovoltaic? The ability to leverage AI helps us do things better and smarter. It may be as simple in this case as the ability for the network to learn what the indicators of imminent power failure are, and to make judgments in some form to switch to other sources.