Volume 29: Closing Carbon Cycles – A Transformation Process Involving Technology, Economy, and Society: Part IV

Comparison of constant and sliding pressure operation strategies for a 1 MWe multi-field concentrated solar power plant Irfan Shaikh and Anish Modi

Abstract

A 1 MWe multi-field solar thermal power plant comprising parabolic trough collectors and linear Fresnel reflectors was proposed and studied in the literature for Jodhpur, India. This power plant runs without a fossil fuel backup and thermal energy storage. It operates at part-load due to daily and seasonal variations of the direct normal irradiance, causing a reduction in annual power generation and capacity factor. The steam turbine usually operates at a constant pressure. The present study simulates the power plant using a sliding pressure operation strategy and compares the annual performance with a constant pressure strategy. The simulations were performed in TRNSYS for the 1 MWe multi-field power plant proposed at Jodhpur, India. The simulation showed an improvement of 3.83 % in annual electricity production using sliding pressure compared to the constant pressure operation strategy.

Keywords Multi-field, concentrated solar power plant, linear Fresnel reflector, parabolic trough collector, TRNSYS