A Case Study of Solar Powered Cellular Base Stations

Green power, environment protection and emission reduction are key factors nowadays in the telecom industry. Balancing of these modes while reducing the capital and operational costs are of prime importance. Cost efficient and reliable supply of electricity for mobile phone base stations must be ensured while expanding the mobile phone network. In this context, solar energy, using sophisticated photovoltaic cell technology, is considered to be playing very important role. Currently, companies such as ABI research, Flexenclosure AB, etc believe that the solar powered cellular base stations are capable of transforming the telecom industry into one of the greenest in the world. Hence, lot of research is in progress across the globe to use solar power in telecom industry. In this thesis work, the significance of solar power as renewable energy source for cellular base stations is reviewed. Moreover, simulation software called PVSYST4.37 is used not only to obtain an estimate of the cost of generation of solar power for cellular base stations but also to obtain the system parameters such as the number of modules, batteries and inverters needed for designing the solar powered cellular base stations. The simulations were carried out for the Grid-Connected and the Stand-Alone solar power systems by considering the cases of New Delhi, India and Stockholm, Sweden. The PVSYST4.37 simulation results shows that the power generation costs for the grid connected solar powered system is less compare to standalone solar powered system both in New Delhi, India as well as in Stockholm, Sweden.