Incremental State-Space Model Predictive Control of a Fresnel Solar Collector Field

Eduardo Camacho,Antonio Gallego,Adolfo Sanchez,Manuel Berenguel

doi:10.3390/en12010003

Eduardo Camacho, Antonio Gallego + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/en12010003

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Journal: Energies	Publication Date: Dec 20, 2018
Citations: 13	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: Universidad de Sevilla, University of Almería

Abstract

Model predictive control has been demonstrated to be one of the most efficient control techniques for solar power systems. An incremental offset-free state-space Model Predictive Controller (MPC) is developed for the Fresnel collector field located at the solar cooling plant installed on the roof of the Engineering School of Sevilla. A robust Luenberger observer is used for estimating the states of the plant which cannot be measured. The proposed strategy is tested on a nonlinear distributed parameter model of the Fresnel collector field. Its performance is compared to that obtained with a gain-scheduling generalized predictive controller. A real test carried out at the real plant is presented, showing that the proposed strategy achieves a very good performance.

Highlights

Governments are promoting the use of renewable energy sources to reduce the environmental impact generated using fossil fuels [1,2]
This paper presents a control scheme designed for the Fresnel collector field which is a part of the solar cooling plant located at the Engineering School (ESI) of Seville [9,10]
Two simulation are carried out comparing the response of the two controllers, the GS-generalized predictive control (GPC) and the Model Predictive Controller (MPC)

Summary

Introduction

Governments are promoting the use of renewable energy sources to reduce the environmental impact generated using fossil fuels [1,2]. The main application of the use of solar energy is producing electricity in solar thermal plants. A solar thermal plant is composed of a solar field which heats up a heat-transfer fluid (usually synthetic oil) to a desired temperature, a steam generator which uses the heated fluid to produce electricity, a storage system which provides energy when the solar field is not capable of doing it, and auxiliary elements such as valves, pipes etc. PS10 (10 MW), PS20 (20 MW) and Khi Solar One are examples of solar power plants operated by Atlantica Yield and Abengoa Solar respectively [6]

Results

Discussion

Conclusion