Selection of Best Power Supply Source for Telecom Towers in Remote Areas

Abstract

Installation of telecom towers in remote areas especially in developing countries like India is a major problem for telecom industries because of the unavailability of reliable power supply. The grid supply is not regular in these countries and up to some extent, they are dependent on diesel generators for power supply. But these diesel generators have some major issues such as high operating cost due to high cost of fuel, transportation cost of fuel, high maintenance cost, and these diesel generators also emits pollution to the environment. In presented work, an approach has been proposed for telecom companies for providing power supply to their telecom towers. An economic cost analysis has been proposed by considering various criteria such as cost, air & noise pollution and reliability, etc. Some power supply alternatives including unconventional and hybrid of conventional and unconventional alternatives have been compared to find the solution such as diesel-powered telecom towers, solar powered telecom towers, and their hybrids. The main objective of this work is to provide a reliable, cost effective and environment friendly Remote Area Power Supply (RAPS) system for a particular site in India (Uttar Pradesh). A number of criteria are involved in discussed problem in order to select an effective power supply source. Therefore, the problem has been considered as a Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) problem. To select the best alternative, a Fuzzy AHP and TOPSIS based approach has been proposed. Fuzzy AHP (Analytic Hierarchy process) has been used for calculating the weightage of criteria and the concept of Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) has been applied for ranking the alternatives. The results give assured reliability and sustainability for remote areas using a solar photovoltaic (PV)-diesel generator hybrid energy system.