Sizing of an hybrid generation system as an primary energy source for a base transceiver station

Advances in telecommunications requires the use of alternative energy sources for electricity generation in remote off-grid sites. Using the data of wind speed and irradiance in the city of Liberia, Guanacaste, Costa Rica, and the data of the prototype wind turbine 5kW designed in Ad Astra Rocket Company Costa Rica established on the same site, is achieved to dimension, using the Spyder software (Python) a wind-solar hybrid generation system to power a standard GSM cellular base radio with a maximum demand of 1.8 kW. This system requires an energy storage system, which retains the energy in hours of production and delivers it during the hours without sun or wind. Instead of using battery banks, it uses an hydrogen generation and storage system, to deliver this energy using a fuel cell as is needed. The hybrid generation system becomes the primary power source of the base station. The simulation runs using two cases with data from an average day, the first one is the month with the lowest values of wind and solar radiation; the second one corresponds to the average values of data. For the site of study, these data corresponds with the months of September and May. After the simulation, it founds, it requires only 14 solar panels and one wind turbine. However, the turbine does not a produce significant amount of energy during the month of September, but it majors contributions during the months of December to May. Finally, the sizing is verified with a simulation of the whole year, this validation shows the state of the hydrogen tank, resulting in a system able to maintain the radio base active, in theory, all year round. The energy required to power the base radio at times of low production is 218.9 kWh. This corresponds to an amount of stored hydrogen of 6.57 kg. Moreover, if it stores the total hydrogen produced, this corresponds to a total of 8.38 kg.