Joint Energy and Data Storage Management for Cost Reduction in Renewable Cellular Networks

Abstract

The future integration of renewable energy in mobile cellular networks promises to significantly reduce the energy generation cost and the carbon emission using conventional fuel generators. Nevertheless, the random nature of renewable energy generation and data traffic energy demand makes efficient usage of renewable powered communications difficult. In particular, unregulated renewable power generation can either be over- or under-supplied in the short-term compared to the load demand, which can result in energy waste due to battery overcharging or higher electricity cost due to the use of more expensive grid power. In this paper, we propose to make use of both energy and data storages to tackle the instantaneous mismatch between renewable energy generation and energy demand. By exploiting the delay tolerance in the data traffic, we propose a threshold-based energy and data storage management method to minimize the long-term energy cost of cellular system operator. Simulation results show that the proposed method can effectively improve the utilization of renewable energy and reduce the energy cost.