Thermal energy storage for solar power plant applications

As awareness of global warming and its adverse effects as caused by human activities increases in the world, renewable energy is fast gaining popularity as a way of combating the "energy trilemma" i.e. meeting requirements for environmental sustainability, energy security and energy equity. (WEC, 2015) The sun is the primary source of renewable energy with the exception of geothermal energy. Solar energy utilization is however limited due to intermittency of the resource. Solar thermal power plants employ solar radiation as the heat source to produce steam to drive turbines and produce electricity. Solar Thermal Energy (STE), unlike other solar energy conversion technologies, offers potential for storage of excess energy produced, for later use. This is a sure way of increasing operation hours and thus capacity to produce power. The paper reviews thermal energy storage systems and shows that the storage material is the main driving force in system design considerations.