| Abstract |
: |
Thermal energy storage systems can store heat or cold to be used under various conditions such as temperature, place or power. The main use of thermal energy storage systems is to overcome the mismatch between the generation and usage. Large-scale thermal energy storage is widely used today. It has become a commercially used technology in solar power plants. In a concentrated solar power system (CSP), there is always the availability of huge thermal energy to be stored. A solar power tower system, which is a type of concentrating solar power (CSP), is simulated with the SAM (System Advisor Model) in this work. Along with it, an in-house custom model is developed that is coupled with the System Advisor Model (SAM) including thermal energy storage through a rigorous simulation. In this work, two types of thermal energy storages for the CSP plants are simulated. The first type is the classic two-tank storage system, which is a sensible heat storage system with molten salt. The second type used in this work is latent heat storage. Since there is no commercial availability of a latent heat storage system yet for a CSP tower system, their cost is predominantly assumed here from published literature sources. From this model, a large data set of economical insights is generated such as installed costs, equipment costs, capacity factor net capital costs of the plant, net cost of the two-tank storage unit and the latent heat storage unit. The results from such a technical and economical evaluation guide decision makers towards meaningful investments in innovative technologies. |
