Hybrid Energy System for Powering Base Transceiver Stations with Different Battery Storage Technologies

This study presents modeling and simulation of a stand-alone hybrid energy system for a base transceiverstation (BTS). The system is consisted of a wind and turbine photovoltaic (PV) panels as renewableresources, and also batteries to store excess energy in order to boost the system reliability. Two differenttypes of batteries are considered for storage purposes; lead-acid and vanadium redox-flow batteries (VRB)batteries. Most stand-alone energy systems for various applications take advantage of at least a singlestorage technology, generally lead-acid batteries. However, with recent advances in different batterytechnologies, vanadium redox-flow batteries could be taken into account as reliable candidate. Thevanadium redox-flow battery has a desirable prospect due to its extended life span and also the potentialfor separating and scaling up involved nominal power and nominal energy. The system is modelled andsimulated hourly (quasi-dynamically) in Matlab for an operational year. The model utilizes insolation,wind speed and air temperature data. The system performance has been assessed with a mobile telephoneBase Transceiver Stations (BTS) as the case study. Simulations results have shown that the suggestedmodel can be used to study the effect of the altering weather conditions on each charge/discharge cyclesand batteries voltage. Finally the proposed model yields the optimal battery network design for a varietyof applications.