Impact Of Distributed Energy Resources On The Reliability Of Critical Telecommunications Facilities

Documents a probabilistic risk assessment of an existing power supply system at a large telecomm. office. The focus is on characterizing the increase in the reliability of power supply through the use of two alternative power configurations. Failures in the power systems supporting major telecomm. service nodes are a main contributor to major telecomm. outages. A logical approach to improve the robustness of telecomm. facilities would be to increase the depth and breadth of technologies available to restore power in the face of power outages. Distributed energy resources such as fuel cells and gas turbines could provide one more onsite electric power source to provide backup power, if batteries and diesel generators fail. Illustrations.