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Design of Solar System for LTE Networks

Article in International Journal of Environmental Sustainability and Green Technologies · July 2020
DOI: 10.4018/IJESGT.2020070101

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 International Journal of Environmental Sustainability and Green Technologies
Volume 11 • Issue 2 • July-December 2020

Design of Solar System for LTE Networks

Naglaa Kamel Bahgaat, Electrical Communication Department, Faculty of Engineering, Canadian International College
(CIC), Giza, Egypt
Nariman Abdel Salam, Electrical Communication Department, Faculty of Engineering, Canadian International College
(CIC), Giza, Egypt
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3295-6408

Monika Mady Roshdy, Electrical Communication Department, Faculty of Engineering, Canadian International College
(CIC), Giza, Egypt
Sandy Abd Elrasheed Sakr, Electrical Communication Department, Faculty of Engineering, Canadian International College
(CIC), Giza, Egypt

ABSTRACT

Rapid growth in mobile networks and the increase of the number of cellular base stations requires more
energy sources, but the traditional sources of energy cause pollution and environmental problems.
Therefore, modern facilities tend to use renewable energy sources instead of traditional sources. One
renewable source is the photovoltaic panel, which made from semiconductor materials which absorb
sunlight to generate electricity. This article discusses the importance of using solar panels to produce
energy for mobile stations and also a solution to some environmental problems such as pollution.
This article provides a design for a solar-power plant to feed the mobile station. Also, in this article
is a prediction of all loads, the power consumed, the number of solar panels used, and solar batteries
can be used to store electrical energy. Finally, an estimation of the costs of all components will be
presented. Good discussion and conclusion will be presented about the results obtained. The results
obtained are promising. In addition, a future plan is described to complete this important study.

Keywords
Cellular Stations, Cost Estimations, Design of Solar panels, Loads Estimation, LTE Networks, Photovoltaic,
Renewable Energy, Solar Power, Storage batteries

1. INTRODUCTION

With the development of information and technology and the fast increase in considerable data
traffic, the energy consumption by the network is also respectively increasing. The preparation of
3G and 4G technologies are significantly contributed to the increase in power consumption in the
communication sector (Ratheesh & Vetrivelan, 2016). The BS (base station) is the main source of
energy consumption in the wireless access network (Chen et al., 2011). It has been estimated that
more than 57% of the operator total energy consumption is in the BS (Bogucka & Conti, 2011; Chen
et al., 2011; Chen et al., 2011; Han et al., 2011; Ratheesh & Vetrivelan, 2016) and there are about 3
million BSs worldwide that consume about 4.5 GW of power (Kumari, 2016). More than 50% of the
total consumed energy of the communication network is consumed by the radio access part, whereas
50-80% is consumed for the power amplifier (PA).
Many (BS) stations in rural areas that are not connected to the power grid are powered by diesel
generators for all day and night as well as a backup power source for few hours per day in urban and

DOI: 10.4018/IJESGT.2020070101

Copyright © 2020, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.


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International Journal of Environmental Sustainability and Green Technologies
Volume 11 • Issue 2 • July-December 2020

suburban areas. These diesel generators consume a huge amount of diesel and emit a large quantity
of CO2.
The telecommunications industry contributes about 2% of the total CO2 emissions worldwide,
and this percentage is expected to increase to 4% by 2020. Governments are likely to organize CO2
emissions of industries in their countries. In this case, mobile network operators may be given a
total per month or per-year energy budgets in the term of CO2 emissions. Therefore, mobile network
operators are driven to reduce their energy consumption (Han & Ansari, 2013; Mostafa et al., 2017).
To optimize the 4G telecommunication site a green system design is being offered which
eliminates the dependence of the grid and diesel, as the diesel has high emission and pollutions
and uses about 40000 tons per year of carbon emission caused by diesel generators of 100,000 cell
towers (Kumari, 2016). On the other hand, using green power systems instead of diesel generators
reduces operational costs, emissions and noise pollution, allows penetration of cellular networks in
rural areas. Maintenance required is reduced, and due to the attractive payback period and the whole
system costs less on the long term.
This paper mainly focused on energy-efficient techniques in base stations as it constitutes the
major source of energy consumption in wireless access networks. This paper aims to present a
unified treatment of solar power system as green solutions and analytical models for both network
operators and mobile users. Such a unified treatment will help in the future to develop green solutions
that enable an improved and balanced efficient operator use of electricity. This article will use the
photovoltaic (PV) model as a type of green energy to feed the Mobil station located in a 6 October
City in Egypt and take into account the environmental conditions in addition to all other requirements
of the mobile network. The parameters of the mobile network and all loads will be estimated and
all calculations with the range of the required voltage and the cost estimate of all appliances will be
submitted in the article.
This paper is arranged as follows: Section one introduction to the paper. The second section
presents a literature review of the study. Section three introduces photovoltaic energy with the
discussion about its technologies and types. While section four shows the case study and presents
the proposals of all the results of the designed (PV) power station of the mobile network located in
6 October city in Egypt. Also, section five concludes the paper, a list of references for this paper are
given at the end of the paper.

2. LITERATURE REVIEW

The use of traditional energies such as diesel and other types of fuel has significant damage to the
environment and is one of the most important sources of environmental pollution in addition to the
cost of production and therefore the world is currently moving to develop modern types of natural
and renewable energies. There are many types of green energy used to produce electrical power like
wind turbines, solar cells and other types as described in Figure 1 (Han & Ansari, 2013).
One of the most important types of new energy and renewable solar energy, which was used
individually to produce energy or link to the original network (Mostafa et al., 2017)
The efficient usage of energy in wireless networks represents a major concern in academia and
industry, mainly because of environmental, financial, and quality-of-experience considerations. A
new solution has been proposed to enable efficient energy usage in wireless networks and tries to
create more energy-saving and eco-friendly computational systems, these approaches are referred
to as “optimizing mobile network with green energy”. From the user side, it has been estimated that
there are around 3 billion MTs (mobile terminals) in the world with a power consumption of 0.2–
0.4 GW (Han & Ansari, 2014). The elevated energy consumption of wireless access networks has
promoted enhanced environmental and economic issues for service providers and users, as well as
considerations of quality of experience (QoE) for mobile consumers.

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 International Journal of Environmental Sustainability and Green Technologies
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Figure 1. Green energy enabled mobile networks

Some telecom carriers now target a 20 percent power reduction per year on the equipment they
deploy. This is a response to increasing power consumption in central offices, which is due to higher
bandwidth capacities, increasing line card port densities, more intelligent processing requirements,
and more complex chip implementations. Higher power consumption equals higher operating costs
for telecom providers, so in this paper by proposing our solar system design for the telecom site as
presented in Figure 2 (Mclaughlin et al., 2011) power consumption of the site has been reduced by
replacing the diesel generator and the grid power with the below system.
According to the block diagram of the system, if sun exposure is sufficient, PV modules supply
power for loads and batteries. But if sun exposure is insufficient, PV modules and batteries supply
power for loads. And if there is no sun exposure at all, batteries supply power for loads. In the final
section of this paper, each element in this design will be discussed and the reason for selecting these
particular types from each element. A cell tower site type was selected to design the system on it,
which coverage radius from 0.5 to 25 miles; Cell towers are structures that are designed to support
one or more cell sites. The tower is typically manufactured from steel. The cell site transmitting
equipment is mounted in the rental or compound region at the base of the tower and is linked via
coaxial or hybrid wires to the antennas mounted on the tower (Mclaughlin et al., 2011). Cell towers
could be towers of lattice or self-support, guyed towers, monopoly towers, and hidden towers. It is
possible to design concealed towers to resemble trees, signs, light norms, and other structure forms.
And the equipment shelter should be chosen very carefully to protect the equipment of any natural
or unnatural disasters. To provide a safe and secure framework for delicate telecommunications

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Volume 11 • Issue 2 • July-December 2020

Figure 2. Block diagram of Telecom Site with a PV system

equipment, the equipment shelter suppliers offer a varied range of structures. Whether it is a concrete,
steel or lightweight fiberglass construction, the designs are only as limited as the requirements of the
customer. Customization is a commodity that producers take seriously to satisfy the ever-changing
requirements of the industry. Some manufacturers will incorporate DC energy supplies and base
transceiver station equipment provided by the client to decrease installation and testing on-site,
offering a faster and more economical system launch outsourced. Others will provide inclusion zones
for clients who want their equipment installed (Dominguez, 2019; Krawczeniuk, 2019). Reaching to
the design of the mobile station, first selecting the right PV solar panels for a large solar installation
like a telecom site application can be confusing. To be able to do the necessary design of the BS, the
components of this network must first be identified. The following some of these components with
a discussion of them.

3. PHOTO VOLTAIC ENERGY

Renewable energy is the energy generated by sources that are constantly renewed such as rain, wind,
waves, sunlight, tides, and geothermal heat. There are many negative effects of other conventional
energy sources such as coal, gas, oil, uranium, and so on to the health of the human and in general on
to the environment. Also, conventional energy sources are a huge source of atmospheric pollution.
Therefore, the world is currently moving to use new and renewable energy to avoid these problems
(Akkucuk, 2015; Feng et al., 2019; Krawczeniuk, 2019). One of the important renewable types is the
solar cell. Sunlight is an excellent energy source which used for many applications such as electricity
generation, as electrical power of automobiles, an electrical source for powering the cellular base
stations. As presented in (Ike et al., 2014) the generation of electricity using solar energy is made
by using photo-voltaic technology based on the conversion of sunlight into electricity. An array of
solar photovoltaic cells is connected in series or parallel to have a large amount of electricity. The
generated electricity can be stored or directly used, fed back into the grid line or combined with one
or more other generators of electricity or more renewable energy sources. Solar PV is a very reliable
and clean source of electricity for a wide variety of applications. There are four types of PV power
systems used for cellular base stations as describe in (Akkucuk, 2016; Krawczeniuk, 2019) the first
type is the grid-connected with (no-battery back-up) systems, this system used only when the utility
is available. Otherwise, the system is shut down until utility power is restored. The second type is
the grid-connected with battery back-up, in this type a battery is used to store the energy for critical
load circuits operating when the power outage. If the power outage occurs during the day, the PV

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array can support the battery in supplying. The third type is Stand-Alone Solar Power Systems, in this
type the solar power systems aren’t connected to the grid. They are made from many parts, batteries,
switches, inverter, and solar arrays. The power of PV arrays is stored in the batteries and the power
passes from the batteries to the inverter which converts the DC power to AC to connect to the base
station. The fourth type is Stand Alone Hybrid Systems, in this type many power sources are used
instead of a single source. There are two types of stand-alone hybrid systems; the first is a system
with diesel and the other stand-alone hybrid system with fuel (Ike et al., 2014).

3.1 Photovoltaic-Powered Telecom Base-Station

Radio communication based on a wireless communication station at a fixed location they used to
communicate as part of a wireless telephone system. These base-stations are made up of several
antennas on a metallic tower and a house of electronics at the base of the tower (Trieb et al., 2014;
Kumari, 2016; Peake, 2018). So, it must secure a supply of power for the communication stations.
The power supply may be unstable and expensive or required regular maintenance and expensive
to run like diesel generators and these stations cause air pollution. By utilizing PV power station to
run the base stations, and will reduce their operational cost and then allow for deeper penetration of
mobile networks (Yaacoub, 2012; Akkucuk, 2015; Manickamuthu et al., 2019). In recent years, the
telecom sector has increased interest in the using of solar technology to generate power for cellular base
stations. PV power is utilized in remote cellular base stations, in developing countries the base stations
often off-grid and depend on their power sources. In developing countries there are over 230,000
cellular base stations will be wind-powered or PV-powered by 2014 (Pande, 2009; Akkucuk, 2016).
In developing countries, renewable energy will power 4.5% of the world’s mobile base stations by
2014, over 0.11% in 2010 as described in (Akkucuk, 2015; Bell & Leabman, 2019), and the cleantech
market intelligence firm forecasts that 8% of base stations in these countries will use renewable power
by 2014 (Bell & Leabman, 2019). There are about 5 million telecommunication towers worldwide,
640,000 of which aren’t connected to an electrical grid and largely run on diesel power. Renewable
options also become much useful as the energy needed to power base stations is reduced. Depending
on how old the tower is, whether the radio equipment is housed in an air-conditioned building, and
how many transceivers are in the base station, the average cellular base station, which includes the
tower and the radio equipment attached to it, can use about one to five kilowatts (kW). The radio uses
most of the energy to transmit and receive cell phone signals (Tweed, 2013; Alsharif et al., 2017).

4. CASE STUDY

In this section we will present a proposal for a PV system to feed the LTE mobile network located in
6 October city in Egypt, there are two primary kinds of frequently accessible and inexpensive solar
panels on the market, either produced of silicon cells Poly (polycrystalline) or Mono (monocrystalline).
The distinction is that Mono has a greater power density but costs more per watt. A normal Poly panel
size can provide $168 for 240W while Mono’s same size panel can provide $202 per panel for 260W
per panel. Note that the panels are always priced by the Watt and the price of Poly per Watt is lower
(Alsharif et al., 2017). Mono’s benefits are when there is a larger installation of solar panels; it is
observed that incremental installation, shipping and mounting hardware expenses on Mono are lower
per watt, keeping the complete cost per watt in line with that of a Poly installation. This sometimes
provides the panels of Mono. A slight overall cost advantage on huge projects, but in smaller PV
projects the advantage is generally not seen.
Either type is suggested but it is usually better for big projects (from 4-5kW complete size) that
the Monotype has greater energy density per Watt. The PV systems linked from many arrays consisting
of a collection of modules, each module is made up of the number of cells that are in the object.

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Volume 11 • Issue 2 • July-December 2020

4.1 Specify the Number of Arrays

Panels are rated at their peak watts, meaning that under direct DNI concepts (Direct Normal Solar
Insolation, 1000 watts per meter) this is the amount of power that a panel can produce at this strength
per hour of the sun. Sun hours and day hours are not the same things. Each region of the planet has
a complete amount of “sun hours” also referred to as DNI, solar insolation, radiation or irradiation.
These are annual averages and consider the average rain or cloud cover of the area. Solar power is
measured at KWh (kilowatt-hours) per square meter per day. To know how many watts are needed,
the full amount of solar energy needed per day must be regarded. For off-grid applications such as
our telecom site, this implies the quantity of energy required to operate the system during the sun Plus
the amount of power needed to be stored in batteries for after-sun operation. The quantity of after-sun
hours also determines the battery plant’s size. The fundamental formula is to take the kWh required
daily by the electric scheme and split it by the location’s sun hours. Then divide that by the panel
Watts’s rating in (kW), to see how many panels are needed. A 200 W panel would be expressed as
0.2 KW for this calculation as presented in (Dotche et al., 2019). See how many panels are required.
For this calculation, a 200 W panel would be expressed as 0.2 KW as displayed in (Dotche et al.,
2019). And the size of a solar panel is 320Wp, requires 72 cells per module for commercial panels
and the cell size is 156 mm * 156 mm as stated in (Luceño-Sánchez et al., 2019). Temperature is
one variable. All solar panels are classified as STC (standard test condition); they’re produced at the
moment. At elevated temperatures, the real energy will be smaller and greater at reduced temperatures.
A string sizing calculator using the panel specification label values can provide the best indication
of true energy at different temperatures where the DC system may need to function under cloud or
rain conditions as in (Barnes, 2019) that impact the ordinary capacity of the panels to deliver the
rated power. Second, the solar storage controllers control the energy flowing from the PV array and
move it straight to the batteries as a DC-coupled scheme or to the load, which is the most efficient
and efficient way. Giving batteries as soon as possible is a significant feature of a charge controller.
The charge controller connects the batteries to the solar panels. There are two technology choices
for charge controllers as the choice of the charge controller is either PWM (Pulse Width Modulation)
or MPPT (Maximum Power Point Tracking) The MPPT controllers remove the peak energy from
solar panels, as shown in (Thomsen et al., 2019), but it is more costly. Based on the maximum power
point, the MPPT controllers use an algorithm to monitor the output of the PV panel and handle the
voltage of the PV panel. It checks the output of the PV and compares it to the voltage of the battery,
then makes changes to the voltage to insert the highest current into the battery. MPPT controllers
give a prospective rise in charging effectiveness of up to 30 percent, and these controllers also offer
the potential to have an array with greater input voltage than the battery bank, allow sizes up to 80
Amps, and MPPT controller warranties are typically longer than PWM units. Furthermore, MPPT
offers excellent flexibility for system development and MPPT is the only way to do so. MPPT offers
excellent flexibility for system development and MPPT is the only way to control grid connection
modules for battery charging.
As mentioned in (Alsharif, 2017; Chiaraviglio et al.,2019), there are two types of solar DC cables
for linking the design parts together and also for cabling the solar panels themselves; first type are’
module wires’ or string cables,’ these cables are usually integrated into solar PV panels. And they are
connected with suitable connectors. The second type is’ DC main cable’, a unique extension cable that
should be used to connect the positive and negative cables from strings to the generator connection
box (or directly to the solar power inverter). Depending on the power output of the modules, PV
cables with cross-sectional areas of 2,5mm2, 4mm2 and 6mm2 are usually used. DC cables are used
for outdoor use. The second form is ‘ DC primary cable, usually used depending on the module power
output. DC cables are used for outdoor use. The positive and negative cables may not be put together
in the same cable in order to achieve earth fault and short circuit. Double insulation single-wire cables
have proven to be a practical choice and provide high reliability. The third element is the batteries,
they are also connected to the charging controller to be protected from discharging or overloading

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Volume 11 • Issue 2 • July-December 2020

beyond the limit, but in both cases the battery life decreases. It also has a DOD (depth of discharge)
to control the proportion that should be charged or discharged. A battery stores energy in a chemical
form that can be transformed into electrical form. A battery is rated for its output voltage and present
capability. Typically, rechargeable batteries are accessible in 6 volts and 12 volts output. A battery’s
capability is determined by the quantity of energy it can store. A huge quantity of energy storage will
involve a big battery. Its present capability is provided in terms of ampere-hour (Ah), which informs
us how much current and how soon the current can be extracted from a fully charged battery. For
instance, a 10 Ah battery can provide 10 A current for 1 hour or 1 A current for 10 hours. As the
size of the battery rises, the Ah capability of the battery also improves. In this model, choosing the
battery type “power” is preferred as it is the widely used form in the telecom sector. For the cell, it
is 2 volt and the battery has 6 cells that are 12 volts and 150Ah. To connect 4 batteries that called
string in sequence to get the 48 volts required for the site (Yıldırım & Baysal, 2019).
After identifying each component in the layout with its function and estimating the loads at
telecom locations. As recognized, telecom site equipment is split into three components; transmission,
telecom, and energy equipment in relation to the on-site lights. And as known also the solar system
can be established only for 2 G and 3Gbut as for 4 G it consumes very high power so it would not be
efficient to include 4 G in the site, also the site is two industries, not three as it is built in the desert
with small population so no need for the third sector and two is sufficient to cover the chosen region.
In the next section (Table 1), the information needed for all the equipment outlined above is provided.
As for the supplier, selecting all the charging equipment used in the design was the decision on the
“HUAWEI” company.
Table 1 presented a real expected load that works throughout the day and electrical power
consumed for these loads while lighting lambs works during periods of darkness only which we expect
to work from 7 pm to 7 am. The next section discusses the calculations based on the readings on Table
1 to make a real design of PV station and estimate the number of needed batteries used to feed these
loads. These calculations of the PV system, Solar PV system involves various parts that should be
chosen according to the type of scheme, place of the site and apps. Solar charge controller, battery
bank, and batteries as outlined in the following steps are the main elements for the solar PV system.

Table 1. Telecom site loads

Type Equipment Function Power consumption Working hours

Telecom RUS (Radio units) Send and receive 370 W 24 hr
radio signals
DUG&DUW (Digital Control processing 80 W 24 hr
unit)
RRU (Remote radio Transceiver to the 150 W 24 hr
unit) base station
BBU (Baseband unit) Baseband processing 200 W 24 hr
Transmission RTN 980 (Radio Transport of 300 W 24 hr
transmission system) microwave signals
Power PBU (Power Power distribution 1400 W 24 hr
&battery unit) and saving
Light DC lambs Lighting 25W 14 hr

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4.1.1. Step 1: Loads Estimation

The first step in designing a solar photovoltaic system is to determine the total power and energy
consumption of all loads that need to be supplied by the solar photovoltaic system as follows (Boxwell,
2012; Mina & Sakr, 2019): determine the total energy requirement of the system loads in order to
multiply the power consumption of each component that must be supplied by its working hours in
order to obtain the energy of the equipment, and then add all the energies of all equipment, and as
mentioned in (Table 2) that all the components are DC.
The total energy requirement of the system (E) = No.ofunits× ratingofequipment

E = (370 + 80 + 150 + 200 + 300 +1400) * 24 +25*24 = 60.35 kWh (1)

4.1.2. Step 2: Estimating the Number of PV Panels

Various sizes of PV modules will generate varying energy quantities. The complete maximum watt
generated required to determine the size of the PV module. The generated Wp (maximum watt) relies
on the size of the PV module and the place climate. Considering the distinct “sun hours” at each place,
the sun hours are about 5.5 hours for Egypt. Determining the size of PV modules, calculate as follows:
Required PV power is calculated by dividing the watt-hours of the loads over the sun hours of
Daily total loading in kWh
the area PV =
sun hours
60.35
PV = = 10.973 kwp (2)
5.5

Required number of PV panels is calculated by dividing the daily total loads in Whr over the
sun hours by the rating of the PV panel and choose 320Wp panel as it has high power density and
more commercially used (N)

DailttotalloadsinWhr
N panel =
panelrating*sunhours

60.35 KWhr
N panel =  = 35 panels (3)
320 × 5.5

4.1.3. Step 3: Estimation of the Battery Bank

Unfortunately, all the power from a battery cannot be consumed as each battery has a DOD (Depth
of Discharge) rate to prevent them from damaged and for lead-acid, the DOD is 50% and chooses
batteries of 150 Ah, 12 V (Solanki, 2008; McClure et al., 2019). So, to know the number of batteries
first to calculate the ampere-hour needed to form the loads, and as our system operates with 48 V
DC divide the daily total load by the operating volt. Then we divide the ampere-hour of the loads
over the battery size in ampere-hour by its DOD.

DailytotalloadsinWhr
( )=
Ampere hours of loads for the system H
48

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Volume 11 • Issue 2 • July-December 2020

60.35 KWhr
H= = 1257 Ah (4)
48

Ampere hours of loads

Number of batteries needed for the system (N Battery) =
Battery size × DOD

1257
N Battery =  = 17 batteries (5)
150 × 0.5

But as known the sun does not always bright and shines and there are cloudy and raining days
these days are called autonomy days. So the autonomy days have to be taken into consideration
while designing the system as the system works only on the batteries, not the solar panels. Estimate
the autonomy days as three days (Barnes, 2019) then multiply the autonomy days by the number of
batteries in normal days to get the total number of batteries needed for the system.
To t a l n u m b e r o f b a t t e r i e s n e e d e d fo r t h e s y s t e m ( N B a t t e r i e s t o t a l ) =
utonomy days ×  number of batteries in normal 

N Batties total = 3 × 17 = 51 batteries (6)

The calculate the required batteries capacity to make sure that the PV system will cover the
needed capacity of loads including the batteries

Required batteries capacity C

 =numberofbatteries ×batterysize× batteryvolt

C = 51 × 150 × 12 =91800W
 (7)

So, our PV system will cover the needed capacity as it produces 10973 Wp and the total load
capacity is 91800 Whr. To present all calculations in more statistical way, Figure 3 shows the solar
system performance during the day time by each hour from 12.00 am to 12.00 pm in which the red
line presents the watts of the loads, the blue curve presents the PV production and the black curve
presents the watt-hour of the battery storage, all that based on the calculations made as presented in
(Table 2). This presents the calculations in a more professional way.
Figure 3 presents that the required power of the load be constant during the day (from 12:00 am
to 12:00 pm) presented in red line while the blue line shows the solar performance during the day
time which begin at 7 am and increase during the morning to reach the maximum value at 12:00 to
1:00 pm, then the solar power decreases gradually during the day time to reach to zero at 7:00 to
8:00 pm. The black line presents the storage of the batteries which charged during the periods of
sunshine to reach its maximum value during the afternoon, which is the work of the solar system at
full capacity and then start to feed the loads during periods of solar breaks during the night. All the
loads in the mobile station presented in Table 2, all loads estimations during each hour shows in the
table and finally summations of all power.
In Table 2 an estimate was made of the loads during each hour of the day and the energy consumed
for all loads was compiled daily, thus calculating the number of solar panels needed to produce this
energy and the number of batteries needed to store the energy as shown in the following:

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Volume 11 • Issue 2 • July-December 2020

Figure 3. PV system performance

No. of 320 Wp =35

solar module power = 11200 Wp
Required PV Power=10973 Wp
Daily max DoD=0.5
Battery voltage= 12V
Required Battery capacity=91800 W.hr
No. of Batteries=51
Battery Size=150

4.1.4. Step 4: Cost Estimation of the System

After finding out the required number and capacity of various system components like panels, batteries
and charge controller it is a trivial job to estimate the cost (Ali et al., 2019). One has to just add the cost
of all components considering the cost of wiring and supporting infrastructure for panels and batteries.

Cost of PV panels = No. of PV panels × Cost per Wp = 35 × 320 × 6 LE = 67200 LE (8)

Cost of batteries = No. of Batteries × Cost per battery = 511 × 5000 = 255000 LE  (9)

Cost of charge controller =2000L.E

Total cost of system = PV panels + Batteries +Charge controller

= 67200 + 255000 + 2000 = 324200 LE  (10)

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Table 2. PV System calculations

Load 1 Load Load Load Load Load Load

2 3 4 5 6 7

Lighting Rus DUG RRU BBU PBU RTN LOAD PV Battery Accumulated
980 production storage PV
production

Load in W 25 370 80 150 200 1400 300 W W.hr W.hr W.hr

12:00~1: 00 √ √ √ √ √ √ √ 2525 76010.9

AM

1:00~2: 00 AM √ √ √ √ √ √ √ 2525 73485.9

2:00~3: 00 AM √ √ √ √ √ √ √ 2525 70960.9

3:00~4: 00 AM √ √ √ √ √ √ √ 2525 68435.9

4:00~5: 00 AM √ √ √ √ √ √ √ 2525 65910.9

5:00~6: 00 AM √ √ √ √ √ √ √ 2525 63385.9

6:00~7: 00 AM √ √ √ √ √ √ √ 2525 60860.9 0.0

7:00~8:00AM √ √ √ √ √ √ 2500 377.19 58738.1 377.2

8:00~9:00AM √ √ √ √ √ √ 2500 1508.75 57746.9 1885.9

9:00~10:00AM √ √ √ √ √ √ 2500 3771.88 59018.8 5657.8

10:00~11:00AM √ √ √ √ √ √ 2500 6035.00 62553.8 11692.8

11:00~12:00AM √ √ √ √ √ √ 2500 9052.50 69106.3 20745.3

12:00~1.00PM √ √ √ √ √ √ 2500 11315.63 77921.9 32060.9

1:00~2:00PM √ √ √ √ √ √ 2500 11315.63 86737.5 43376.6

2:00~3:00PM √ √ √ √ √ √ 2500 9052.50 91800.0 52429.1

3:00~4:00PM √ √ √ √ √ √ 2500 6035.00 91800.0 58464.1

4:00~5:00PM √ √ √ √ √ √ 2500 3771.88 91800.0 62235.9

5:00~6:00PM √ √ √ √ √ √ √ 2525 1508.75 90783.8 63744.7

6:00~7:00PM √ √ √ √ √ √ √ 2525 377.19 88635.9 64121.9

7:00~8:00PM √ √ √ √ √ √ √ 2525 0.00 86110.9 64121.9

8:00~9:00PM √ √ √ √ √ √ √ 2525 83585.9

9:00~10:00PM √ √ √ √ √ √ √ 2525 81060.9

10:00~11:00PM √ √ √ √ √ √ √ 2525 78535.9

11:00~12:00PM √ √ √ √ √ √ √ 2525 76010.9

Hrs. 14 24 24 24 24 24 24 60350 64121.875

energy 350 8880 1920 3600 4800 33600 7200 60350 W.hr

The replacement cost is zero because the PV array and inverter have a lifetime as given in Table
3 longer than the project lifetime; and battery bank has an assumed lifetime of 10 years, which is
equal to the project lifetime.
Figure 4 summarizes the net present cost for the proposed solar-powered system from capital
cost, replacement cost, O &M (Operation& Maintenance) cost and salvage value (Ali et al., 2019).

5. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

This paper presented a design and optimization of a solar energy power plant for a cellular mobile base
station, and briefly discussed the renewable energy importance and usage instead of the traditional

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Volume 11 • Issue 2 • July-December 2020

Table 3. Cost estimation for PV system in telecom site

Cost Estimation
Equipment PV Panels Batteries Charge Controller
Number of units 35 51 1
Cost 67200 L.E 255000 L.E 2000 L.E
Total cost 324200 L.E

Figure 4. Summary of the net present cost for the system’s component

sources of electrical energy for the mobile network power consumption models. Also, this paper
presented the main four types of PV power systems used for cellular base stations. And also investigated
how to design and estimate all the equipment and loads of the solar power plant and estimated the real
cost of all equipment of this power plant. The quality of the design of the PV power station for the
mobile network is determined by the constancy of voltage to save power every day. Minimum cost
and improving environmental problems like pollutions comparing with the other traditional power
sources. After estimating and calculating all loads used in the mobile station we found that the amount
of energy we needed was 60.35 kWh, number of panels are 35 panels, number of batteries used are
51 battery and the total cost of the solar station was 324200 L.E Which is considered a relatively
low value compared to the costs of permanent fuel and increasing of the fuel prices periodically, but
the cost of the establishment of solar power stations will be for once and then become the cost of
maintenance and operation only and this is also an advantage of renewable power plants.
In the future it will be very important to study the connection of more types of renewable energy
stations together, such as solar and wind power stations, We take advantage of the different features of
each type and avoid the defects of them, such as periods of sunshine during foggy or windy weather
and will also be examined some of the problems we suffer from such as, effects of dust and moisture
on solar panels and the amount of energy produced in Difficult weather factors.

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Naglaa Kamel Bahgaat is an Assistant Professor in the Communication Department, Canadian International Collage
(CIC), 6 October City, Giza, Egypt. Received a B.Sc. and M.Sc. in the Electrical Engineering and Machine Dept.
from Ain Shams University, Egypt. He received a Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering at Al Azhar University.
Research interests include renewable energy, control systems, Fuzzy Logic, and artificial intelligence techniques
in protection, control, and safety of power systems.

Nariman AbdEl-Salam Bauomy is an Assistant Professor in the Electronics and Communication Department, at
the Canadian International Collage (CIC), 6 October City, Giza, Egypt. She received a B.Sc. and an M.Sc. in the
Electronics and Communication Department at Helwan University, Egypt. She received her Ph.D. in Electronics
and Communication at Cairo University. She has 20 years of teaching experience and is currently working as an
Assistant Professor in Electronics and Communication Department, in Canadian International Collage (CIC). She
has published more than 10 research papers in international conferences and journals. Her research interests
include electronics, wireless communications, control systems, digital signal processing, mobile systems, Internet
of Things, and software defined radio.

Sandy Abd Elrasheed Sakr is a fresh graduate communication engineer (2019) with great knowledge of mobile
technologies and telecom hardware equipment in addition to Huawei HCNA training.

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