Sustainable Power Supply for Cellular Base Transceiver Stations Using Solar PV–Battery Systems

Cellular Base Transceiver Stations (BTSs) require reliable and uninterrupted power supply to keep these stations operating continuously. The regular power outages and reliance on diesel generators add to the operating costs, fuel usage and greenhouse gas emissions, and traditional terrestrial photovoltaic (PV) systems require a lot of land and supporting infrastructure, which are not suitable for densely populated areas in Bangladesh. This paper introduces an integrated PV–battery system using the tower structure of BTS to replace the independent PV support structure, and no additional land will be needed, which is the tower-integrated PV–battery system. A 9.84~kWp PV system was designed and evaluated with the existing battery backup under the climatic condition of Bangladesh. This study explores the electrical performance, energy generation, economic viability and environmental advantages of the proposed configuration, taking into account the extra structural reinforcement needed for tower mounting PV system. The simulation results show that the proposed system can effectively reduce the consumption of grid electricity, the operation of diesel generator, improve the utilization of renewable energy, and reduce the operating costs of the whole life cycle with the estimated payback period of about 4 years. In addition, the proposed configuration can offer the necessary carbon dioxide emission reduction of ~11-12 tCO2 for the year and can utilize the existing telecom infrastructure to the maximum extent. The results show that tower integrated PV systems can be a technically feasible, economically viable and scalable solution to enhance the sustainability and resilience of the Bangladesh BTS power system, as well as other power systems in other countries sharing similar energy and land challenges.