Solar Powr System

SOLAR POWER TOWER

1. INTRODUCTION

The solar power tower (also knows as 'Central Tower' power plants or 'Heliostat' power plants or power towers) is a type of solar furnace using a tower to receive the focused sunlight. It uses an array of flat, moveable mirrors (called heliostats) to focus the sun's rays upon a collector tower (the target). The high energy at this point of concentrated sunlight is transferred to a substance that can store the heat for later use. The more recent heat transfer material that has been successfully demonstrated is liquid sodium. Sodium is a metal with a high heat capacity, allowing that energy to be stored and drawn off throughout the evening. That energy can, in turn, be used to boil water for use in steam turbines. Water had originally been used as a heat transfer medium in earlier power tower versions (where the resultant steam was used to power a turbine). This system did not allow for power generation during the evening.

1.1 OVERVIEW

To date, the largest power towers ever built are the 10 MW Solar One and Solar Two plants. Assuming success of the Solar Two project, the next plants could be scaled-up to between 30 and 100 MW in size for utility grid connected applications in the Southwestern United States and/or international power markets. New peaking and intermediate power sources are needed today in many areas of the developing world. India, Egypt, and South Africa are locations that appear to be ideally suited for power tower development. As the technology matures, plants with up to a 400 MW rating appear feasible. As non-polluting energy sources become more favored, molten-salt power towers will have a high value because the thermal energy storage allows the plant to be dispatch able. Consequently, the value of power is worth more because a power tower plant can deliver energy during peak load times when it is more valuable. Energy storage also allows power tower plants to be designed and built with a range of annual capacity factors (20 to 65%). Combining high capacity factors and the fact that energy storage will allow power to be brought onto the grid in a controlled manner (i.e., by reducing electrical transients thus increasing the stability of the overall utility grid); total market penetration should be much higher than an intermittent solar technology without storage. One possible concern with the technology is the relatively high amount of land and water usage. This may become an important issue from a practical and environmental viewpoint since these plants are typically deployed within desert areas that often lack water and have fragile landscapes. Water usage at power towers is comparable to other Rankine cycle power technologies of similar size and annual performance. Land usage, although significant, is typically much less than that required for hydro [3] and is generally less than that required for fossil (e.g., oil, coal, natural gas), when the mining and exploration of land are include

1.2 SYSTEM DESCRIPTION

Solar power towers generate electric power from sunlight by focusing concentrated solar radiation on a tower-mounted heat exchanger (receiver). The system uses hundreds to thousands of sun-tracking mirrors called heliostats to reflect the incident sunlight onto the receiver. These plants are best suited for utility-scale applications in the 30 to 400 MWe range. In a molten-salt solar power tower, liquid salt at 290Ñ"C is pumped from a 'cold' storage tank through the receiver where it is heated to 565Ñ"C and then on to a 'hot' tank for storage. When power is needed from the plant, hot salt is pumped to a steam generating system that produces superheated steam for a conventional Rankin cycle turbine/generator system. From the steam generator, the salt is returned to the cold tank where it is stored and eventually reheated in the receiver. Figure 1 is a schematic diagram of the primary flow paths in a molten-salt solar power plant. Determining the optimum storage size to meet power-dispatch requirements is an important part of the system design process. Storage tanks can be designed with sufficient capacity to power a turbine at full output for up to 13 hours.

The heliostat field that surrounds the tower is laid out to optimize the annual performance of the plant. The field and the receiver are also sized depending on the needs of the utility. In a typical installation, solar energy collection occurs at a rate that exceeds the maximum required to provide steam to the turbine. Consequently, the thermal storage system can be charged at the same time that the plant is producing power at full capacity. The ratio of the thermal power provided by the collector system (the heliostat field and receiver) to the peak thermal power required by the turbine generator is called the solar multiple.

Figure 1.1: SYSTEMS LAY OUT

2. RANKINE CYCLE

There are four processes in the Rankine cycle, each changing the state of the working fluid. These states are identified by number in the diagram above.

* Process 4-1: First, the working fluid is pumped (ideally isentropic ally) from low to high pressure by a pump. Pumping requires a power input (for example mechanical or electrical).

* Process 1-2: The high pressure liquid enters a boiler where it is heated at constant pressure by an external heat source to become a superheated vapor. Common heat sources for power plant systems are coal, natural gas, or nuclear power.

* Process 2-3: The superheated vapor expands through a turbine to generate power output. Ideally, this expansion is isentropic. This decreases the temperature and pressure of the vapor.

* Process 3-4: The vapor then enters a condenser where it is cooled to become a saturated liquid. This liquid then re-enters the pump and the cycle repeats.

Rankine cycles describe the operation of steam heat engines commonly found in power generation plants. In such vapor power plants, power is generated by alternately vaporizing and condensing a working fluid (in many cases water, although refrigerants such as ammonia may also be used).

The working fluid in a Rankine cycle follows a closed loop and is re-used constantly. Water vapor seen billowing from power plants is evaporating cooling water, not working fluid.

3.HELIOSTAT

It comes from Helios, the Greek word for sun and stat, as in stationary.