Most African remote telecoms base stations are powered from diesel generators, however, these generators are losing attractiveness due to their less reliability in addition to high operational and maintenance costs. Over 65% of the loss of telecom services observed in remote areas are caused by outages resulting from diverse types of failures that these generators can suffer, on top of their impacts on the environment. As alternative, off-grid renewable energy systems are often employed in place of diesel generators due to their capability to provide reliable electricity at an acceptable cost. This study proposes an off-grid system based on PV generators and backup energy storage consisting of lithium-ion batteries as an extended solution for powering remote telecom base stations in Africa. Modelling and simulation is performed using Matlab/Simulink environment. The findings showed better characteristics of lithium-ion battery bank as compared to lead-acid unit; lithium-ion battery bank displayed higher initial current and voltage over lead-acid battery bank. Moreover, when, both battery banks reached 50 % of their state of charge, lithium-ion bank current was still higher than that of lead-acid bank. In the same vein, lithium-ion battery bank presented a slower discharge time than lead-acid battery bank on top higher values at 50 % and 70% state of charges. Lastly, the state of charge of the lead-acid battery at the end of the simulation was 50 %, while that of the lithium-ion battery bank was around 60 %.
Opportunity for Improving Lead-Acid Battery Management of Photovoltaic-Genset-Battery Hybrid Power Systems Based on Measured Field Data