Thermodynamic and economic analyses of a parabolic trough concentrating solar power plant under off-design conditions

As concentrating solar power technologies progressively move to maturity, large-scale concentrating solar pow plants have elicited increasing attention. The thermodynamic simulation and economic analyses of a 50 M' parabolic trough concentrating solar power plant in northwest China were conducted in the present work. TI effects of meteorological conditions, including direct normal irradiance and ambient temperature, on the 01 design performances were investigated by simulation calculations. Furthermore, economic and sensitive an lyses were conducted based on the annual simulation. Results show that the back-pressure of air-cooled co denser fluctuated with both ambient temperature and power generation. The power generation of summer at autumn days would decrease by 0.53-1.38 MW for the rise of condenser back-pressure. The clouds mainly fected the molten salt level of hot tank in thermal energy storage. In the economic analysis, with the decrease the feed-in tariff from 16.6 C/kWh to 8.6 C/kWh, the maximum total net income dropped from 6.65 M$ 2.43 MS. The optimal design condenser back-pressure rose from 5.0 kPa to 5.5 kPa. Moreover, the optimal desil back-pressure of air-cooled condenser was not sensitive to the cloud effect in certain range, but the total n income had a sharp drop from 7.37 M$ to 4.95 M$.