Optimal Hybrid Solar Photovoltaic and Concentrated Solar Power Design for Zimbabwe Baseload Generation

For the past years until now, Zimbabwe is experiencing power outages that have a drastic impact on the nation’s economy, education and health systems. The objective of this paper is to propose a scalable optimal solar photovoltaic and concentrated solar power (PV-CSP) hybrid system that can generate electricity to minimize load-shedding and improve electricity access to the nation’s population. Considering the geographical location and the availability of the renewable resources, Southern Africa experiences more sun hours in a day compared to wind and rainfall. The installed, hydropower and coal-fired power plants were able to sufficiently meet the energy demands in Zimbabwe, however urbanisation and the growth of the nation’s population as well as the increasing number of new energy consuming equipment in the recent years has promoted load-shedding within the country. Fossil fuels are continuously depleting, and climate change has a huge impact on the amount of rainfall which is affecting the hydro-power plants. Considering the number of unhindered sun-hours, the hybridization of CSP and PV technologies is a promising collaboration. The low cost of PV power production and the dispatchability of CSP, coupled with thermal energy storage (TES), can deliver electricity, stabilize the grid and meet the energy demands at a lower cost than what could be achieved with CSP alone or with PV alone. The integration of CSP and PV has a high possibility of reducing the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) with the least greenhouse gas emission compared to other hybrids integrated with fossil-fuel. PV-CSP hybrid may have an increase in capital costs and sometimes the cost of electricity however, large scale integration of PV and CSP can have a slight increase in the cost of electricity at night as both the systems will be using their stored energy, but a guaranteed stable grid will be provided