Design of an off-grid hybrid PV/wind power system for remote mobile base station: A case study

There is a clear challenge to provide reliable cellular mobile service at remote locations where a reliable power supply is not available. So, the existing Mobile towers or Base Transceiver Station (BTSs) uses a conventional diesel generator with backup battery banks. This paper presents the solution to utilizing a hybrid of photovoltaic (PV) solar and wind power system with a backup battery bank to provide feasibility and reliable electric power for a specific remote mobile base station located at west arise, Oromia. All the necessary modeling, simulation, and techno-economic evaluation are carried out using Hybrid Optimization Model for Electric Renewable (HOMER) software. The best optimal system configurations namely PV/Battery and PV/Wind/Battery hybrid systems are compared with the conventional stand-alone diesel generator (DG) system. Findings indicated that PV array and battery is the most economically viable option with the total net present cost (NPC) of $57,508 and per unit cost of electricity (COE) of $0.355. Simulation results show that the hybrid energy systems can minimize the power generation cost significantly and can decrease CO2 emissions as compared to the traditional diesel generator only. The sensitivity analysis is also carried out to analysis the effects of probable variation in solar radiation, wind speed, diesel price and average annual energy usage of the system load in the optimal system configurations.