Data Report for Solar Site Suitability Analysis



Data Report for Solar Site Suitability Analysis

A 100 MW hybrid power plant of concentrated solar power is selected for evaluation considering the use of a natural gas backup system to maintain a continuous operation. For the analysis, a direct steam generation (DSG) concept was chosen, mainly because DSG allows higher system efficiency, lower number of components, enhanced plant simplicity, reduced risk of heat transfer fluid (HTF) leaks to the environment, reduced electricity generation costs and a great potential for improvement due to the simplicity of DSG schemes compared to traditional SEGS systems. (Luladey 2006)

The analysis considers the plant depicted in Fig. 1, which is similar to the Almería GDV plant model with superheated steam conditions of 400 °C and 65 bar at the turbine inlet. The thermodynamic state at the turbine inlet and outlet are fixed in order to maintain continuous generation. Then, if the solar radiation conditions are such that the fluid needs additional heating, a fossil-fired backup system is used. A total fluid mass flow rate of 142 kg/s is required to reach the desired power output at fixed conditions. This total mass flow rate is distributed among 100 collector rows of equal mass flow rate each, configuration that avoids steam/water stratification due to evaporation within the absorber tube. The modeled solar field is composed by 10 modules each with 10 rows of collectors. One row is composed by 14 ET-100 collectors.

Fig. 1. Solar DSG plant configuration with fossil fuel backup system.

Different locations were selected in northern Delaware to analyze the plant performance, covering from a minimum of 1500 kWh/m2 to a maximum of 3200 kWh/m2 of yearly radiation. These radiation conditions are representative of northern Delaware and have been validated. Specific requirements have been considered to select appropriate locations: terrains with ground inclination lower than 3%, proximity to mining clusters or ...