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SUPERCAPACITORS ENABLE
WINTER OPERATION WITHOUT
GENERATOR REFUELING
Lead Acid Batteries vs. Supercapacitors
Genset Runtime:
Lead Acid Batteries required Generator to run 4,824 hours per year
Supercapacitors required generator to run 1,023 hours per year
This site is under 10' of snow from November to May. With lead acid batteries
we would have run out of fuel by January and wouldn't be able to keep the
site on air. With the supercaps, we only refuel the generator tanks 1 time
per year and it's only 1/2 empty when we do. We could not keep this
99 site going year around without supercaps.
Charles Newdigate, Cell Site Technician
42.6 kWh
42.6 KWh of Supercapacitors
Power Handling
16kW Vertiv Rectifiers
7 Solar Controllers
Solar provides
primary power
- 15 Kws of solar power
- 6,000 gallon of propane
4G and 5G implementation was increasing the load of the site by a factor of 5 at this AT&T communication site. Constructed more than 10 years prior as a solar site, a PV panel upgrade increased the PV gain by a factor of 4 but more power was needed. Additional real estate for the PV array was not available. Additional power must come from a generator. But at 10,000 foot elevation it would be impossible to refuel in the winter. The solution - optimize generator runtime and minimize generator fuel consumption using supercapacitors as the storage medium.
Implementation was increasing the load of the site by a factor of 5 at this AT&T communication site. Constructed more than 10 years prior as a solar site, a PV panel upgrade increased the PV gain by a factor of 4 but more power was needed. Additional real estate for the PV array was not available. Additional power must come from a generator. But at 10,000 foot elevation it would be impossible to refuel in the winter. The solution – optimize generator runtime and minimize generator fuel consumption using supercapacitors as the storage medium.