Optimized battery charge control in PV-hybrid applications

BTS sites are subject to constant cost pressure. Operational cost and especially Diesel consumption form ever increasing cost components. Here, photovoltaics (PV) is an effective measure to cut down operational cost and emissions for hybrid BTS sites. Often PV is integrated in a non-optimal way opening up room for improvements to the operational management. Three different advanced PV-hybrid operational management features are identified, developed and discussed. It can be shown that that significant fuel savings are generated by improving operational management and battery charge control. However, most of the identified fuel savings are at the cost of a higher number of generator starts. The optimal compromise within this trade-off is project specific and can be determined by dynamic modeling and simulation.