Renewable-Energy-Powered Cellular Base-Stations in Kuwait’s Rural Areas

Mohammed W. Baidas, Mastoura F. Almusailem, Rashad M. Kamel and Sultan Sh. Alanzi
Additional contact information
Mohammed W. Baidas: Department of Electrical Engineering, College of Engineering and Petroleum, Kuwait University, P.O. Box 5969, Safat, Kuwait City 13060, Kuwait
Mastoura F. Almusailem: Department of Electrical Engineering, College of Engineering and Petroleum, Kuwait University, P.O. Box 5969, Safat, Kuwait City 13060, Kuwait
Rashad M. Kamel: Department of Electrical Engineering, College of Engineering and Petroleum, Kuwait University, P.O. Box 5969, Safat, Kuwait City 13060, Kuwait
Sultan Sh. Alanzi: Department of Electrical Engineering, College of Engineering and Petroleum, Kuwait University, P.O. Box 5969, Safat, Kuwait City 13060, Kuwait

Energies, 2022, vol. 15, issue 7, 1-29

Abstract: Cellular network operators are actively expanding network coverage and capacity by deploying additional base-stations to provide mobile services to customers in rural areas. The increasing deployment of cellular base-stations has increased the power consumption, energy cost, and associated adverse environmental impact. This paper addresses the feasibility of using renewable energy sources to power off-grid rural 4G/5G cellular base-stations based on Kuwait’s solar irradiance and wind potentials. More importantly, a hybrid renewable energy system will be designed and modeled to meet realistic energy demands of remote base-stations and determine the optimum size of the hybrid system components. Particularly, the hybrid off-grid system may incorporate wind turbines (WTs), photovoltaic (PV) solar panels, converters, a battery bank (BB), and a back-up diesel generator (DG). Two remote cell-sites are considered, namely: (1) Jal-Alayah and (2) Wafra, where the Jal-Alayah cell-site is characterized with higher average wind speed (and wind potential), while the Wafra cell-site has higher average clearness index and solar irradiance. Various hybrid PV/wind electric system (HPWES) configurations are modeled and simulated via HOMER software, with the aim of determining the optimal configuration—in terms of net present cost (NPC)—in each cell-site. Specifically, the simulations have revealed that the WT-BB configuration is the most economical at the Jal-Alayah cell-site while requiring minimal land area and ensuring 100% renewable energy and zero CO 2 emissions. This configuration is followed by the PV-DG-BB and PV-WT-DG-BB configurations, where the latter configuration incurs a marginal increase in the NPC than the former but with less land area. On the other hand, the PV-BB configuration is the most cost-effective in the Wafra cell-site; however, in the scenario of limited land area, then the PV-DG-BB configuration can be used but at the expense of slight increase in the NPC and CO 2 emissions. This study confirms that utilizing renewable energy sources in two rural areas in Kuwait can be extremely effective in replacing conventional DG-powered base-stations, while minimizing the NPC and CO 2 emissions.

Keywords: base-stations; cellular networks; HOMER; hybrid; off-grid; renewable energy; solar; wind (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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