Technical feasibility assessment of a standalone photovoltaic/wind/adiabatic compressed air energy storage based hybrid energy supply system for rural mobile base station

Abstract The standalone renewable powered rural mobile base station is essential to enlarge the coverage area of telecommunication networks, as well as protect the ecological environment. In this paper, a standalone photovoltaic/wind turbine/adiabatic compressed air energy storage based hybrid energy supply system for rural mobile base station is proposed. The energies from renewable sunlight and wind are the primary power sources and the adiabatic compressed air energy storage system acts as the energy buffer to manage the fluctuations in both demand and generation sides. Meanwhile, the hybrid cooling strategy is also adopted by consisting of air conditioner, fan assistant natural ventilation and turbine exhaust from adiabatic compressed air energy storage during discharge. The simulation results under design condition demonstrate that the loss of power supply probability is 0.988%, and the monthly load and individual equipment power consumption, the monthly cooling energy demand and supply and the monthly energy generation and consumption all match well. Then, the effect of photovoltaic-wind turbine configuration, the air tank volume and storage pressures of adiabatic compressed air energy storage on system performance have been implemented. Moreover, the loss of power supply probability analysis show that the required photovoltaic panels number increases with the reduced air tank volume in conditions of fixed wind power capacity and fixed 1% maximum loss of power supply probability threshold, whereas the dump load rate raises. For a certain air tank volume and maximum loss of power supply probability threshold, the dump load rate firstly reduces and then rises with the wind turbine number increases.