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The telecommunications sector in India has seen rapid growth and modernization in the last decade. This has led to a substantial increase in telecom towers installed in the country. Due to an unreliable grid, most tower companies are forced to use diesel generators to provide power to the towers. This increases the operational costs and also contributes to the carbon emissions of the sector. One way of reducing this is by using solar as a solution to provide power to the towers.
This paper gives a techno-economic analysis on using solar PV system to provide power to telecom towers in India. A conventional Telecom site is analyzed for its power needs and the power sources that are used. A solar PV and battery standalone system is designed to using PVsyst to generate and store the whole day’s power requirements of the tower. A feasibility analysis is done to get the Internal rate of Return (IRR), Net Present Value (NPV) and Levelised Cost of Electricity (LCOE). Different cases are made by increasing the days of autonomy of the battery bank and the feasibility analysis is done. This is then compared with the base case to find the best case that can be used to power a telecom tower.
Keywords- Solar PV system, Battery bank, Base transceiver station (BTS), Days of Autonomy, LCOE.
