Disclosed are an energy conservation transmission method, base station, and terminal device; the base station can configure an energy conservation signal for the terminal device; the energy conservation signal carries energy conservation information; the energy conservation information can indicate a first configuration of at least one discontinuous reception (DRX) cycle of the terminal device, the at least one DRX cycle comprising at least one first cycle and/or at least one second cycle; the first cycle and the second cycle are long cycles and/or short cycles, and the first cycle is different from the second cycle; the first configuration of the DRX cycle includes at least one of the maximum number N of DRX cycles, the maximum number K of the first cycle, and the number Y of the first cycle, all of N, K, and Y being integers greater than or equal to 1; thus the energy conservation signal can indicate to the terminal device for any combination of DRX cycles of different lengths, solving the problem in the prior art of how to configure the number of DRX cycles indicated by the energy conservation signal.