Optimal sizing of photovoltaic-wind-diesel-battery power supply for mobile telephony base stations

The paper proposes a novel planning approach for optimal sizing of standalone photovoltaic-wind-diesel-battery power supply for mobile telephony base stations. The approach is based on integration of a comprehensive probabilistic sequential Monte Carlo simulator and a black-box optimizer using DIRECT (DIviding RECTangles) method. The main property of the simulator is that input variables are modeled as correlated random processes rather than independent random variables without a time index. By taking into account autocorrelation and mutual correlation, temporal properties of all input variables are kept realistic, such as sunrise and sunset times in irradiance model, daily and seasonal changes in temperature model, and consumption of cooling devices and electronic equipment which depends on the ambient temperature and setting of the parameters of the control devices. The optimization target is to select rated capacities of major system components and to tune the main control parameters for achieving minimum total annual costs without compromising system reliability. The proposed algorithm is tested on planning a typical 2 kW potential base station located on a windy and sunny hill in the Mediterranean region.