Wind power audit work at communication base stations

Worldwide thousands of base stations provide relaying mobile phone signals. Every off-grid base station has a diesel generator up to 4 kW to provide electricity for the electronic equipment involved. The presentation will give attention to the requirements on using windenergy as an energy source for powering mobile phone base stations.

The telecommunication services included in this review are those that have demonstrated to be more sensitive to nearby wind turbines: weather, air traffic control and marine radars, radio navigation systems, terrestrial television and fixed radio links.

Wind power is one of the fastest-growing technologies for renewable energy generation. Unfortunately, in the recent years some cases of degradation on certain telecommunication systems have arisen due to the presence of wind farms, and expensive and technically complex corrective measurements have been needed.

As the incessant demand for wireless communication grows, off-grid telecommunication base station sites continue to be introduced around the globe. In rural or remote areas, where power from the grid is unavailable or unreliable, these cell sites require generator sets to provide power security as prime power or backup standby power.

It is clearly observed that the radiolinks depicted in green are not obstructed by the wind turbines, while the turbines intercept the second Fresnel zone of the radiolink depicted in red. Fig. 13. Example of the exclusion volumes that should be respected to avoid diffraction effects on radiolinks .

For example, in weather radars, although echoes from isolated storms are mixed with the wind turbine clutter echoes, the wind turbine signals are characterized by random radial velocity and large spectrum width, as it can be observed in Fig. 10.