As the successor of the SOLGAS Project(see [10] in [6]and [3]), which investigated the technical and economical viability of the combination of a solar thermal Central Receiver with a conventional fuel operated power plant, the Colón Solar project is dealing with the actual engineering phase of such a plant. The goal of the study is twofold: First, to investigate control strategies that can han...

using photovoltaic systems is gradually expanded by increasing energy demand. abundance and availability of this energy, has turned to one of the most important sources of renewable energy. unfortunately, photovoltaic systems have two big problems: first, those have very low energy conversion efficiency (in act between 12 and 42 percent under certain circumstances). second, the power produced b...

Nine parabolic trough power plants located in the California Mojave Desert represent the only commercial development of large-scale solar power plants to date. Although all nine plants continue to operate today, no new solar power plants have been completed since 1990. Over the last several years, the parabolic trough industry has focused much of its efforts on international market opportunitie...

Pakistan has been facing an unprecedented energy crisis since the last few years. The problem becomes more severe throughout the year. The current energy shortage crisis has badly hit Pakistan’s economy where hundreds of industries have closed due to lack of electricity to fulfil their requirements. The energy supply and demand gap has risen to 5000 MW [1] and is expected to rise considerably i...

The design of advanced control systems to optimize the overall performance of Parabolic Trough Collectors solar plants with Direct Steam Generation is currently a priority research line at PSA-CIEMAT. The development of dynamic models for use in simulation and control of this type of solar power plant is presented in this article, focused on the DISS experimental solar plant. The developed mode...

The paper is concerned with determining the optimized active areas of a photo voltaic conversion system, of a group of electricity generating wind machines and the optimal capacity of a battery storage system for a combined power plant. Minimization of the total life-cycle cost of the system is the criterion to obtaining the optimized parameters of the system. The algorithm consists of generati...

Designs leading to maximize the use of sun radiation of a given reflective area without increasing the expense on investment are important to solar power plants construction. We here provide a method that allows one to compute shade area at any given time as well as the total shading effect of a day. By establishing a local coordinate system with the origin at the apex of a parabolic dish and z...

In this project a simulation and model for a solar tower power plant are made. The model describes the calculation of the solar position, cosine effects, atmospheric attenuation between heliostat and receiver, heliostat reflectivity and shading and blocking. The model has been done taking into account also a discretization of the surface of the heliostats. This discretization was used to find o...

A model predictive control strategy for a concentrated solar thermal power plant is proposed. Design of the proposed controller is based on an estimated linear time-invariant state space model around a nominal operating point. The model is estimated directly from inputoutput data using the subspace identification method and taking into account the frequency response of the plant. Input-output d...

In the real solar tower thermal power system, it is widely acknowledged that the thermodynamic irreversibility, such as convective and radiative loss on tower receiver, and thermal resistance in heat exchangers, is unavoidable. With above factors in mind, this paper presents an ideal model of the solar tower thermal power system to analyze the influence of various parameters on thermal and exer...