Performance model for parabolic trough solar thermal power plants with thermal storage: Comparison to operating plant data

TLDR: In this article, a simulation model that reproduces the performance of parabolic trough solar thermal power plants with a thermal storage system is presented to facilitate the prediction of the electricity output of these plants during the various stages of their planning, design, construction and operation.

About: This article is published in Solar Energy.The article was published on 2011-10-01 and is currently open access. It has received 265 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Peaking power plant & Parabolic trough.

Figures

Figure 7: Power Block efficiency for conversion of input thermal power into electric power in solar-only mode (solid orange line) and storage mode (blue dashed line) as a function of input thermal power.

Figure 1: Solar thermal power plant projects in operation in the world (March 2011). Left : installed power by country.Right: installed power by technology.

Figure 6: Example of the HTF temperatures calculated during 24 hours.Solid blue line: calculated average HTF temperature in the insulated pipes,Tpipes(Solar Field output).Dashed red line: calculated average HTF temperature in the first SCA of a loop,T1. Dot-dashed green line: calculated average HTF temperature in the fourth SCA of a loop,T4 (loop outlet). The corresponding simulated HTF mass flow rates per loop and operating conditions are those shown in Fig. 10 for July 13th 2010.

Figure 8: Schematic for the decisions taken by the algorithm during the full-operation period on daylight hours. SF stands for Solar Field, PB, for Power Block, TES, for thermal energy storage system, ˙mcalc is the calculated HTF mass flow rate in a loop (see text), ˙mmin is the minimum HTF mass flow rate in a loop,Puse f ulFieldis the useful thermal power captured by the Solar Field after all losses have been subtracted (see section 3.2.10) andPmaxCS toPBis the maximum thermal input to the Power Block on the HTF side during solar-only operation.

Figure 2: Schematic diagram of a parabolic trough solar thermal power plant with thermal storage. In the figure, HX stands for heat exchanger, PH, SG, SH and RH for preheater, steam generator, superheater and reheater, respectively, D stands for deaerator and EV for expansion vessel.

Figure 12: Comparison of simulated (green dashed line) and actual (solid black line) total daily gross electric energy generated by the plant during 42 days, from June 26th to August 6th of 2010.

Frequently asked questions

Q1. What have the authors contributed in "Performance model for parabolic trough solar thermal power plants with thermal storage. comparison to operating plant data" ?

This paper describes a simulation model that reproduces the performance of parabolic trough solar thermal power plants with a thermal storage system. The aim of this model is to facilitate the prediction of the electricity output of these plants during the various stages of their planning, design, construction and operation. Model results for a 50 MWe power plant are presented and compared to real data from an equivalent power plant currently operated by the ACS Industrial Group in Spain. 

Q2. What are the future works in "Performance model for parabolic trough solar thermal power plants with thermal storage. comparison to operating plant data" ?

The authors have presented a detailed model which simulates the performance of a parabolic trough solar thermal power plant with thermal storage. The authors point out the need to consider the actual plant ’ s operation philosophy in order to match the decisions taken by the simulation algorithm to the real ones during operation. It would be desirable to carry out a more extended comparison of the simulation results to the actual plant data considering periods within all seasons of the year. The authors estimate that the gross electrical power generated could vary around 2 − 3 % if they consider the ranges of ambient temperature and relative humidity corresponding to the results shown in section 3. 3. The HTF temperature out of the Power Block heat-exchanger trains and into the Solar Field is also affected by ambient conditions, so that they can expect to better reproduce the actual plant data making use of a more detailed Power Block model.