The energy system must be producing close to zero emissions by mid-century to meet stringent climate goals. There are many possible clean energy options, but few are ready or able to replace coal and gas as primary electricity supplies. This paper addresses the issue of whether a viable energy system can be based mostly around solar thermal electricity. It is found that, using thermal storage, ...

The generation of electricity from solar thermal source has continued to garner more attention due to the very attractive environmental performance, the applicability to small distributed users and as alternative to the fossil fuels power generation. Indeed, solar thermal energy, through the coupling with ORC systems, becomes fit for electric power generation as well and, with a proper thermal ...

The Croatian electricity demand exceeds domestic production and about 30% of additional power is covered from imports. The Croatian government is planning to add domestic production capacity, using natural gas and coal as the main fuel. Due to the attractive solar irradiation in Croatia, these new projects offer the possibility to build these thermal power plants as hybrid plants by adding sola...

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 fa...

Environmental, economic and strategic reasons are behind the rapid impulse in the deployment of renewable energy sources that is taking place around the world. In addition to overcoming economic and commercial barriers, meeting the ambitious objectives set by most countries in this field will require the development of novel technologies capable of maximising the energy potential of different r...

In this paper the Analytic Network Process (ANP) is applied to the selection of photovoltaic (PV) solar power projects. These projects follow a long management and execution process from plant site selection to plant start-up. As a consequence, there are many risks of time delays and even of project stoppage. In the case study presented in this paper a top manager of an important Spanish compan...