Capacity configuration of thermal energy storage within CSP plant considering scheduling economy

Concentrating solar power (CSP) is a new form of solar power generation, and it has schedulability because it contains heat storage device. The capacity of the heat storage affects the operating characteristics of the CSP directly, and configuring the thermal storage capacity of CSP properly can achieve the best controllability and economical efficiency. In this paper such factors as thermal power unit cost, the benefit from environment and operation and maintenance cost of CSP, the cost of spinning reserve and other scheduling economic factors are synthetically considered, to solve the optimal heat storage capacity of the CSP in each scheduling day of one year. On this basis, the balance point between the configuration cost of the heat storage device and the scheduling cost is explored to determine the heat storage capacity configuration of the CSP. Finally, based on the data of CSP from SAM software and IEEE 30-bus system, the proposed model is solved by CPLEX, and the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method are verified.