Optimum Energy Cooperation among Renewable Powered Base Stations

In this paper, an optimum energy cooperation among renewable powered base stations (BSs) is investigated to minimize the mismatch between energy generation and demand in the overall network. This mismatch often results from intermittent renewable power generation and randomness in cellular demand. Thus, at a certain time, some BSs can have excess energy, whereas others can have energy deficit. The solution approach considered in this paper allows each BS to minimize the energy mismatch using its own generation at first. If there are some residual energy mismatches, the BSs forward this information to an aggregator, which collects the energy generation/consumption information from all BSs and optimizes the energy sharing to minimize the energy mismatch in the overall network. The numerical results demonstrate that the energy mismatch will be less for lower noise power, since the power requirement for cellular and smart grid communication will be less. The results also show that the energy cooperation among BSs can reduce the energy mismatch to 0 for up to 21 hours within 48 hours, thus significantly reducing the energy consumption from diesel generators.