Techno-economic assessment of substituting natural gas based heater with thermal energy storage system in parabolic trough concentrated solar power plant

Parabolic-trough (PT) concentrated solar power (CSP) plants are very vulnerable to daily fluctuations in solar radiation. This dependence can be mitigated through a hybridization of solar energy with natural gas based heaters that supply thermal energy during the night or whenever solar irradiance level is dimmed. However, there is more sustainable way for CSP plants to avoid power-generation-outages caused by transient weather conditions, i.e. installation of thermal energy storage (TES). Such a system stores surplus thermal energy provided by solar field during sunny hours and discharges it when the sun is not available. Shams-1PT plant in Madinat-Zayed, United-Arab-Emirates (UAE) has two natural gas based components, i.e. steam-booster heater and heat transfer fluid (HTF) heater. In the current study, model of Shams-1 was developed and analyzed in the System Advisor Model (SAM) software. It has been attempted to replace the HTF heater with TES. A parametric study has been conducted to determine the size of the TES as well as the solar field such that the specified power target demand would be satisfied. The results of the parametric analysis showed that TES can't completely replace the HTF heater, within reasonable sizes. Nevertheless, consequent simulations depicts that TES increases the capacity factor on one hand and decreases fuel consumption on the other hand.