Abstract
Thermoelectric solar plants transform solar energy into electricity. Unlike photovoltaic plants, the sun’s energy heats a fluid (heat transfer fluid (HTF)) and this, in turn, exchanges its energy, generating steam. Finally, the steam generates electricity in a Rankine cycle. One of the main advantages of this double conversion (sun energy to heat in the HTF-Rankine cycle) is the fact that it facilitates energy storage without using batteries. It is possible to store the heat energy in melted salts in such a way that this energy will be recovered when necessary, i.e., during the night. These molten salts are stored in containers in a liquid state at high temperature. The HTF comes into the solar field at a given temperature and increases its energy thanks to the solar collectors. In order to optimize the sun to HTF energy transference, it is necessary to keep an adequate temperature control of the fluid at the output of the solar fields. This paper describes three different algorithms to control the HTF output temperature.
Highlights
The current increasing demand of energy requires the use of clean and renewable energies in order to prevent global warming
In order to compare the response of the process to different disturbances in its input variables using different control strategies, the proposed controllers have been modelled by Simulink blocks
This paper shows the results comparison of three control algorithms:
Summary
The current increasing demand of energy requires the use of clean and renewable energies in order to prevent global warming As it is well known, clean energies take advantage of different natural resources, such as wind, sun, tides, waves, geothermal, and different biofuels. One of the main drawbacks of these energies is their availability: as soon as they are generated, they have to be consumed, and the regulation is more complex than that in traditional energies, since natural resources are certainly unforeseeable In this way, technology has evolved in such a way that different energy storage techniques have been proposed: chemical methods (batteries), flywheels—in which kinetic energy is stored—magnetic energy systems, compressed air storage, thermal storage, pumped hydro, and many others [3,4]. This is the case of solar thermal plants, such as the one that is the goal of this work: “La Africana”, located in Córdoba, in the south of Spain (Figure 1)
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