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Techno-economic competitiveness of 50 MW concentrating solar power plants for electricity generation under Kuwait climatic conditions

2020; Elsevier BV; Volume: 134; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/j.rser.2020.110342

1879-0690

Ali J. Sultan, Kevin J. Hughes, D.B. Ingham, Lin Ma, Mohamed Pourkashanian,

Solar Radiation and Photovoltaics

This work evaluates the concentrating solar power (parabolic trough) technology for electricity generation in Kuwait. The assessment is performed on an existing plant in Spain, and the model is validated using published data. The Direct Normal Irradiance (DNI) of Spain exceeds that of Kuwait by a difference of 176.2 kWh/m2a, but the overall performance of the Kuwait case exceeds that of Spain. With wet cooling, the Kuwait case performance exceeds that of Spain for the annual overall plant efficiency by 2.9% and the annual efficiency of the Solar Field (SF) by 4.1%. Additionally, the annual net electricity output of the Kuwait case exceeds that of Spain by 14,534 MWhe. With dry cooling, the Kuwait case performance exceeds that of Spain for the annual overall plant efficiency by 1.1% and the annual efficiency of the SF by 3.0%. However, the annual net electricity output of the Spain case exceeds that of Kuwait by only 749.8 MWhe. The better performance of the Kuwait case is due to the DNI impact on the number of full load hours of steam turbine, ambient temperature, wind speed, and SF heat loss/dumped energy. The techno-economic assessment considered numerous design configurations utilizing dry cooling in Kuwait due to the lack of water resources. The solar multiple and the number of full load hours of storage are varied to identify optimal configurations. It is concluded that the optimal solar multiple is at 3.3 corresponding to the lowest LCOE of 15.0663 ¢/kWh for 16 h of storage.