Techno-Economic Investigation of Optimal Solar Power System for LTE Cellular Base Stations

Abstract

The enormous growth in the cellular communication system and omnipresent wireless services has incurred momentous energy consumption as well as the emissions of greenhouse gas (GHG) to a great extent. With the enrichment of renewable energy harvesting technology, cellular base stations (BSs) are increasingly powered by renewable energy sources (RES) to minimize functioning expenditures and carbon footprints. The remote off-grid cellular BSs are usually driven by pollution-intensive power supply solutions such as diesel generators (DG) where the utility grid is not suitable or not reliable. Exploiting available energy from renewable energy sources has been evidenced to be cost-effective and eco-friendly in comparison with DG. Accordingly, this paper explores the viability of using solar photovoltaic (SPV) panel and energy storage devices to feed the off-grid Long-Term Evolution (LTE) macro BSs in Bangladesh. The prime objective of this investigation is to minimize net present cost and GHG emissions while ensuring energy sustainability over 10 years. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed solar PV/battery power system achieved significant enhancement of overall expenditure reduction yielding up to 54.8% compared to the diesel power system and ensure prominent energy sustainability with effective modeling of renewable energy harvesting.