Energy and carbon pay back times for renewable power supply systems for Italian RBS off-grid sites

For the first time streamlined life cycle assessments (LCA) were performed to estimate the carbon footprint/energy payback times of three types of RBS off-grid sites in Italian network. Most advantageous is to locate solar wind power system in Southern Italy. Annually between 14 and 19 tonnes of CO
2
e can be saved by replacing power supply system based on diesel generators with renewable solar and wind systems. The pay back times for energy and CO
2
e are around 2 years and 3 years, respectively. LiFePO
4
advanced cycle batteries are preferable to Pb-acid deep cycle batteries thanks to lower diesel usage. In order to find the optimal power supply system when configuring sites multi criteria modeling could be applied.