Abstract
The present work aims to investigate the load-following capability of a tower-based CSP plant assumed to cover a high fraction (90%) of the power demand of a mid-size remote community. The design of a CRS requires the determination of several variables (number of heliostats, layout arrangement, tower height, receiver dimensions) depending on the solar field size and the site location. In this paper, a two-step optimization procedure is presented. A preliminary optimization is carried out to define the solar field configurations minimizing the budget costs for a range of receiver thermal design powers (from 300 MWth to 1000 MWth). The second optimization, based on annual simulation, selects the storage tank volume, the steam turbine rated power, and the actual reflective area (number of mirrors) capable to cover 90% of the power demand at minimum cost. The analysis is carried out for two load profile and two locations in Egypt. The load profile, compared to the solar radiation availability, determines the relationship between tank capacity and turbine size. The level of radiation has the strongest impact on the oversizing of the solar field and levelized cost of electricity.
Highlights
Growing electrical demand is driving the national grid to increasingly severe operating conditions; the existing infrastructures in many regions of MENA are outdated and inadequate transmission capacity leads to frequent blackouts [1]
60% greater storage capacity is required for both load profiles
The production flexibility of central receiver systems (CRSs) plants has been evaluated under different operating conditions in order to analyze the feasibility of the proposed system in remote areas
Summary
Growing electrical demand is driving the national grid to increasingly severe operating conditions; the existing infrastructures in many regions of MENA are outdated and inadequate transmission capacity leads to frequent blackouts [1]. IRENA 2018 report asserts that relying 50% of national generation on concentrating solar power (CSP) plants will increase energy security and improve access to electricity [6]: the embedded storage allows to schedule generation and better accommodate hourly varying demand [7]. The growing interest of the scientific community in central receiver systems (CRSs) over other CSP technologies is justified by higher working temperature level [13], raising plant efficiencies and providing lower storage costs [14]. In the case of large penetration of non-programmable renewables without storage, the back-up generation system (fossil or renewable) must satisfy an energy demand with a typical duck profile characterized by a minimum requirement in central hours and a very steep ramp in the sunset hours [21]. Building on the authors' previous findings on dispatch comparison between CSP systems [22] and detailed design of CRS systems [23,24], several operating conditions are considered to assess the production flexibility of the solutions
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