Gas turbine cycles for hybrid solar power plants

Nowadays development of solar central receiver technology, with volumetric receivers heating air, asics for a thermodynamic cycle able to handle such high temperatures with high efficiency and ease of integration on a hybrid solar power plant. Todays Gas Turbine technology has turbine inlet temperatures of the same order as maximum temperatures experimented on volumetric receivers, and renders itself for a rather easy integration of solar energy input on a hybrid scheme. In this paper we analyse several gas turbine cycles for their use in solar energy applications, giving some insight on how to design and/or use them in solar thermal power plants.