Also visit 'Air Jaldi' for more details.

Originally Post at http://telecompk.net/2007/08/27/solar-powered-wimax-wifi/

Intel has developed a Solar-Powered WiMAX Base Station Solution (pdf), as reported by Daily Wireless. Total system cost is around $10,000. The complete report details the electricity consumptions and savings. Any chance we will see one of these in Pakistan soon?

In remote sites where there is no grid electricity, the cost of a diesel generator can be as high as 40 cents per kWh, including the cost of fuel delivery to the site. In some cases, an electric generator is transported to a repair site, which also adds to the cost.

With a lifetime of 25 years for the solar panels and 15 years for the battery array, Intel says these solar systems can generate electricity at a cost of 33 cents per kWh.

A daily consumption of 69.48 amp-hours, is multiplied by 1.2 as a safeguard factor to account for a slow loss of capacity over the lifetime of the battery. To compute daily power consumption, the base station is assumed to consume power equivalent to a 75% duty cycle at peak power consumption.

To provide a sufficient charging current of 18.53 amps, a total of eight, 200 watt SHARP ND-200U1 panels (pdf) or ten, BP Solar SX 170B panels (170 watts each) are connected in parallel to charge four, Rolls 5000 batteries.

To recharge the battery array, with an average daily recharge time of 4.5 hours, the solar panel modules should provide a current of 18.53 amps. The peak current drawn is 3.86 amps.