Design and control of a hybrid power system for a remote telecommunication facility in Nigeria

Oton, Cyprian (2022) Design and control of a hybrid power system for a remote telecommunication facility in Nigeria. Masters thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

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Abstract

The proliferation of mobile base transceiver station sites in Nigeria comes with a growing need to address those sites' source of power. Sustainability and mitigating harmful environmental impact caused by the diesel-only method of power generation is of great concern. This thesis examines the design, optimal sizing, and control of a Hybrid Power system to replace the current diesel-only option on the site. An outdoor base station site in Agbaja, a rural settlement in Kogi State, Nigeria is used as a case study. HOMER pro is used to size the system based on the measured load and available renewable resources. The PV/Diesel/Battery configuration resulted in the least Net Present Cost (NPC), Cost of Energy (COE), and unmet energy. The system is sized as DC for better performance and elimination of multiple energy conversion experienced in the AC system. A comparison between this proposed system and the current system shows a reduction in operating expenditure (OPEX) by 75% with zero unmet energy. Each component of the system is designed and simulated in a MATLAB/Simulink environment and connected to form the whole system. The transient behaviour of the system is studied under varying solar irradiation to ascertain the stability of the power supplied to the sensitive telecommunication load. The result shows a stable power output to the load at rated voltage of 48 V. Also, a low-cost open source Internet of Things (IoT)- based Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system using ESP32 and Arduino IoT Cloud for monitoring and control of the system using a widget-based dashboard is also presented. Current, voltage, temperature, and humidity sensors are programmed to measure relevant parameters of interest, and the measured Data is processed and parsed to the Arduino IoT Cloud via a Wi-Fi network communication channel. A mobile application is also deployed to aid remote monitoring and control as well. LEDs are used to implement a high temperature and low voltage control logic. The prototype used to demonstrate this only cost $88.34 USD.

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