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Design and dispatch of concentrating solar power tower systems with utility-scale photovoltaics
Hamilton, William T.
Hamilton, William T.
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2019
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By utilizing inexpensive thermal energy storage, concentrating solar power (CSP) can provide dispatchable, stable, and renewable electricity generation; however, current system capital costs are uneconomical for widespread deployment. Conversely, the costs of photovoltaic (PV) systems have dropped significantly in the last decade, which has led to extensive market adoption. Coupling PV systems with batteries can mitigate much of their generation variability; however, the current battery costs are uneconomical to utilize as a grid-scale storage medium. To compete in solar energy-dominated markets while taking advantage of the relative strengths of both technologies, CSP could dispatch electricity around PV generation, resulting a hybridization of the two technologies, referred to as a CSP-PV hybrid. Due to the limited availability of solar resource and storage capacity, CSP-PV hybrid system design and operational decisions are critical to overall economics. This dissertation presents a methodology for evaluating CSP-PV hybrid systems, which includes: (i) integrating CSP and PV simulation modules using a Python wrapper, (ii) expanding a profit-maximizing mixed-integer linear program that provides a dispatch strategy, (iii) implementing solution techniques to improve model tractability, (iv) modeling a molten salt-driven Rankine cycle to characterize off-design performance, and (v) utilizing derivative-free, or "black-box," algorithms to perform system-level design optimization. For CSP-PV hybrid system dispatch at sub-hourly fidelity, we develop solution techniques to reduce solve times by as much as 93%. Additionally, we assess that CSP-PV hybrid systems can almost double capacity factors while improving various economic metrics by as much as 30%. Lastly, we determine that minimizing power purchase agreement price for CSP-PV hybrid design optimization results in systems with capacity factors less than 62%, but nonetheless with greater than 90% reliability.
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