Reducing Levelised Cost of Energy and Environmental Impact of a Hybrid Microturbine-Based Concentrated Solar Power Plant

A multi-objective optimisation of a hybrid solar dish power plant aiming to minimise the levelised cost of energy while keeping emissions as low as possible is presented in this paper. The analysis was carried out for both regenerative Brayton-Joule regenerative cycle and inter-cooled and re-heated regenerative cycle using an analysis tool developed during this research and validated against available experimental data. The plant optimisation was performed using a fast and computationally efficient optimisation technique called “response surface optimisation”, which generates an approximated function (or response surface) that can be used to find a set of thermodynamic parameters that maximise the plant efficiency while minimising emissions. A Design of Experiment (DOE) Latin hypercube technique was used to generate the training database and a one-dimensional model were used to evaluate the output variables for each point of the database. The DOE was then coupled to a Second Order Polynomial regression technique to approximate the behaviour of the system in the design space. A genetic algorithm was then applied in order to find a high performance arrangement. Results show a good trade-off between emissions and levelised cost of energy for both plant layouts. The first arrangment shows a minimum levelised cost of energy in the range between 38.5 and 38.8 €cts/kWh with an electrical power production of about 8kW. The second showed a LCOE in the range between 50.5 and 51 €cts/kWh and a net electrical power output of 16 kW