Analysis of Energy and Cost Savings in Hybrid Base Stations Power Configurations

Wireless networks have important energy needs. Many benefits are expected when the base stations, the fundamental part of this energy consumption, are equipped with renewable energy (RE) systems. Important research efforts have been done to enhance the utilization of RE. However, to the best of our knowledge, these efforts did not take into consideration partially RE-equipped systems. The latter is of great importance considering the high cost of these systems and the feasibility of implementing RE systems at all base station sites. Thus, it is interesting to study the percentage of sites to be equipped with RE systems. In this work, we analyze the energy and cost savings for a defined energy management strategy of a RE hybrid system. Our study of the relationship between cost savings and percentage of sites equipped with RE show significant results. For example, our simulation shows that a cost gain of 60% is realized when 30% of the base stations are equipped with solar panels that harvest only 35% of the total network energy demand at full load. Results also show an upper limit for the battery capacity at which the cost gain is maximized.