Resilient Hybrid Energy System (RHES) for Powering Cellular Base Transceiver Station During Natural Disasters

Thousands of cellular Base Transceiver Stations (BTS) spread throughout the United States including sensitive regions with more frequent natural disasters. As these disasters often induced blackouts in the existing power network, a reliable Backup Power Unit (BPU) with longer runtime is needed for the BTS to improve the availability of communications networks during longer grid outages. This paper evaluates the opportunity of Fuel Cell (FC) combined with photovoltaic (PV) array and battery for a longer backup period (up to 30 hours). The FC is selected due to its longer runtime, higher reliability, low maintenance cost, and lower carbon footprint. A dynamic Energy Management System (EMS) is also proposed to ensure optimal power management of the BTS during both normal and emergency periods. The feasibility of the proposed system is verified numerically by utilizing MATLAB/Simulink. The Simulink/Stateflow model is used for implementing the EMS where the accessible energy information from the utility grid, power sources, and load are used to generate control signals for power conditioning devices to ensure the uninterrupted power for the BTS.