"New Energy" for telecommunications power systems

The considerable problems deriving from the growth of energetic consumptions and from the relevant environmental "emergency" due to the emissions of greenhouse gases, push people to find out new solutions and new technologies for the production of primary energy fit for fulfilling the pressing and growing energetic demands. This is also true in the telecommunication applications, which has seen, in the last years, a remarkable increase in the number of installations present on the whole national territory - sometimes located in hardly reachable areas - and the relevant growth of energetic consumptions. The aim of this work is to optimize energetic consumptions for a radio-telecommunication apparatus, through the combination of different interventions, even more advantageous and efficient from the economical and environmental point of view. The work will explore the possibility of interventions which would use both the renewable energetic sources (e.g.: photovoltaic cells) and strategies in energetic saving and interventions for reducing emissions. This study will evaluate, from a technical and economical point of view, the feasibility of some solutions , by: Energetic auditing for a radio-telecommunication station in different functionality contexts (urban and rural areas, different periods in the year, different running charges, etc.); Verification - even through specific field measurements - of environmental emissions deriving from radio-telecommunications systems; Analyses in the interventions of efficiency and energetic saving (optimization of air conditioning consumptions, efficiency in the temperature control system, etc.); Evaluation and development of interventions and technical solutions based on the production of a part of the power energy used by radio-telecommunication apparatus, through the use of photovoltaic cells on the same infrastructures; Analyses of possible uses of further renewable sources (e.g. wind micro turbines or new alternative power based on fuel cells) generating energy usable from telecommunications power systems located in some parts of the territory not reached by the electricity net; Analyses of the social and environmental advantages in the introduction of technologies based on renewable sources for covering a part of the energetic radio-telecommunication installations' requirements. Environmental monitoring of the sites where prototypal solutions will be installed for comparing the conditions before and after the intervention. The proposing party of the project is the Department of Environmental Sciences of the Second University of Naples (DSA-SUN) in collaboration with the National Agency for the Environment Protection (APAT) and it foresees the participation of providers of mobile communications and technological partners, which, thanks to their experience in the mobile phone communications, are able to test the prototypical solutions deriving from the results of the studies carried out by the laboratories and structures of the DSA-SUN and APAT, and can also make some urban and rural sites available for testing the several proposed solutions. © 2007 IEEE