Author: Salah Ud-Din Khan (King Saud University) - During the fourth industrial revolution, the demand for communications networks increases massively which requires plenty of telecom towers to be implemented to cover the required areas. These towers must be powered efficiently as the generation of electricity is expensive, especially when relying on fossil fuels. This research work presents a techno-economic and feasibility analysis of a stand-alone hybrid energy system design to compensate for the actual load demands of a telecom tower in Saudi Arabia. A Hybrid energy system consisting of solar PV and Diesel as the two energy sources while a battery is considered as a backup is proposed in this research work. The proposed system performance is assessed under different economic and environmental paraments to validate its cost-effectiveness, environmental footprint, efficiency, and reliability. The simulations result reveal that the proposed system configuration can economically compensate for the load requirements of the telecom tower. This study can be considered as a benchmark to deploy this system in remote regions worldwide to fulfill the energy demand of remote telecom towers.
