Dynamic Modeling of a Concentrating Solar Thermal Plant With a Packed Bed Energy Storage

Abstract

The Air-packed bed system is a cost-competitive concentrating solar thermal system that employs air as the heat transfer fluid and a solid packed bed as the thermal energy storage medium. The thermocline behavior of the packed bed plays an important role in the performance and operation of the system, so a dynamic model of the TES is needed to evaluate the design and performance of the system. A high-fidelity first-principle TES model is often too computationally expensive to incorporate into a larger system model for simulation and optimization at an annual time scale. Here, we develop in Modelica a system model for a CST concept plant with a reduced order TES model to ensure the necessary thermocline fidelity while maintaining suitable computational performance. The validity of the reduced order model is quantified both against simulation results from a first-principle finite-difference model and against real-world test data taken at the Heliogen Test Facility in Lancaster, CA. The thermocline fidelity and computational performance of the system model are then demonstrated with an annual simulation run of the concept air-packed bed plant.