Abstract
Solar thermal plants are often considered as a convenient and environmentally friendly way to supply heat to buildings or low temperature industrial processes. Some modelling techniques are required to assess the dynamic behaviour of solar thermal plants in order to control them correctly. This aspect is reinforced while large plants are considered. Indeed, some atmospheric conditions, such as local clouds, could have significant influence on the outlet temperature of the solar field. A common modelling approach to assess the heat transport in pipes is the one-dimensional finite volume method. However, previous work shows limitations in the assessment of the temperatures and in the computational time required for simulating large pipe networks. In this contribution, a previous alternative method developed and validated in a district heating network is used and extended to a solar thermal plant considering the thermal solar gain and the inertia of the pipes. The present contribution intends to experimentally validate this model on an existing solar plant facility available at the Plataforma Solar de Almeria in Spain.
Highlights
Solar thermal plants are one of the current solutions to change the world energy sources and to contribute to a green energy transition by recovering solar energy
This paper focuses on the experimental validation of a medium-size solar thermal plant, it could be extended to the modelling of larger solar plants, while the key element behaviour, namely a pipe, is studied and validated
Solution consists of modelling the dynamic behaviour of the whole system based on few input data
Summary
Solar thermal plants are one of the current solutions to change the world energy sources and to contribute to a green energy transition by recovering solar energy The use of this kind of energy system has grown significantly for several years, especially to produce power or to supply heat to industrial processes or, in some cases, to residential buildings [1]. Like most renewable energy systems, a solar plant is facing to the intermittency of the energy source, namely the Sun, and requires some modelling techniques to couple them to other energy systems or energy storage facilities [3] This aspect is reinforced while large plants are considered such as the solar park in Cape Town in South Africa, where the area of the solar plant can reach several km2 [4]. Some atmospheric conditions, such as local clouds, could have significant influence on the outlet temperature of the solar field and a control strategy should be used to maintain the outlet plant temperature near the defined set point as a predictive control based on climatic observations [5] or with dedicated algorithms [6]
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