Concentrated Solar Power
Concentrated Solar Power
Concentrated Solar Power
1 History
A legend has it that Archimedes used a burning glass
to concentrate sunlight on the invading Roman eet and
repel them from Syracuse. In 1973 a Greek scientist,
Dr. Ioannis Sakkas, curious about whether Archimedes
could really have destroyed the Roman eet in 212 BC,
lined up nearly 60 Greek sailors, each holding an oblong
mirror tipped to catch the suns rays and direct them at a
tar-covered plywood silhouette 160 feet away. The ship
caught re after a few minutes; however, historians continue to doubt the Archimedes story.[6]
Part of the 354 MW SEGS solar complex in northern San
Bernardino County, California.
CURRENT TECHNOLOGY
Current technology
CSP is used to produce electricity (sometimes called solar thermoelectricity, usually generated through steam).
Concentrated-solar technology systems use mirrors or
lenses with tracking systems to focus a large area of sunlight onto a small area. The concentrated light is then Parabolic trough at a plant near Harper Lake, California
used as heat or as a heat source for a conventional power
plant (solar thermoelectricity). The solar concentrators
used in CSP systems can often also be used to provide
industrial process heating or cooling, such as in solar air- mercial parabolic trough plant are representative, alongside with Plataforma Solar de Almera's SSPS-DCS test
conditioning.
facilities in Spain.[20]
Concentrating technologies exist in ve common forms,
namely parabolic trough, enclosed trough, dish Stirlings, concentrating linear Fresnel reector, and solar
power tower.[13] Although simple, these solar concen- 2.1.1 Enclosed trough
trators are quite far from the theoretical maximum
concentration.[14][15] For example, the parabolic-trough
concentration gives about 1/3 of the theoretical maxi- Enclosed trough systems are used to produce process
mum for the design acceptance angle, that is, for the same heat. The design encapsulates the solar thermal system
overall tolerances for the system. Approaching the theo- within a greenhouse-like glasshouse. The glasshouse creretical maximum may be achieved by using more elabo- ates a protected environment to withstand the elements
that can negatively impact reliability and eciency of
rate concentrators based on nonimaging optics.[16]
the solar thermal system.[21] Lightweight curved solarDierent types of concentrators produce dierent peak reecting mirrors are suspended from the ceiling of the
temperatures and correspondingly varying thermody- glasshouse by wires. A single-axis tracking system posinamic eciencies, due to dierences in the way that they tions the mirrors to retrieve the optimal amount of suntrack the sun and focus light. New innovations in CSP light. The mirrors concentrate the sunlight and focus it on
technology are leading systems to become more and more a network of stationary steel pipes, also suspended from
cost-eective.[17]
the glasshouse structure.[22] Water is carried throughout
the length of the pipe, which is boiled to generate steam
when intense solar radiation is applied. Sheltering the
2.1 Parabolic trough
mirrors from the wind allows them to achieve higher temperature rates and prevents dust from building up on the
Main article: Parabolic trough
mirrors.[21]
A parabolic trough consists of a linear parabolic reector
that concentrates light onto a receiver positioned along the
reectors focal line. The receiver is a tube positioned directly above the middle of the parabolic mirror and lled
with a working uid. The reector follows the sun during the daylight hours by tracking along a single axis. A
working uid (e.g. molten salt[18] ) is heated to 150350
C (423623 K (302662 F)) as it ows through the receiver and is then used as a heat source for a power generation system.[19] Trough systems are the most developed
CSP technology. The Solar Energy Generating Systems
(SEGS) plants in California, the worlds rst commercial
parabolic trough plants, Accionas Nevada Solar One near
Boulder City, Nevada, and Andasol, Europes rst com-
3
but they oer higher eciency and better energy storage capability. The Solar Two in Daggett, California and
the CESA-1 in Plataforma Solar de Almeria Almeria,
Spain, are the most representative demonstration plants.
The Planta Solar 10 (PS10) in Sanlucar la Mayor, Spain,
is the rst commercial utility-scale solar power tower in
the world. eSolar's 5 MW Sierra SunTower, located in
Lancaster, California, is the only CSP tower facility operating in North America. The National Solar Thermal
Test Facility, NSTTF located in Albuquerque, NM, is an
experimental solar thermal test facility with a heliostat
eld capable of producing 6 MW.
2.3
Dish Stirling
2.4
4 Eciency
COSTS
ceiver providing a heat source at temperature TH and a The graph shows that the overall eciency does not inheat sink at room temperature T, the overall conversion crease steadily with the receivers temperature. Although
eciency can be calculated as follows:
the heat engines eciency (Carnot) increases with higher
temperature, the receivers eciency does not. On the
contrary, the receivers eciency is decreasing, as the
amount of energy it cannot absorb (Q ) grows by the
= Receiver Carnot
fourth power as a function of temperature. Hence, there
T0
is a maximum reachable temperature. When the receiver
Carnot = 1
TH
eciency is null (blue curve on the gure below), T is:
( )0.25
Qabsorbed Qlost
Tmax = IC
Receiver =
Qsolar
There is a temperature T for which the eciency is
where Qsolar , Qabsorbed , Qlost are
respectively the incoming solar ux
and the uxes absorbed and lost by
the system solar receiver.
d
(Topt ) = 0
dTH
5
4
Topt
(0.75T 0 )Topt
T 0 IC
=0
4
4
Qlost = ATH
(
) (
)
4
TH
T0
1
1
IC
TH
5 Costs
As of 9 September 2009, the cost of building a CSP station was typically about US$2.50 to $4 per watt,[31] while
the fuel (the suns radiation) is free. Thus a 250 MW CSP
station would have cost $6001000 million to build. That
works out to $0.12 to 0.18 USD/kWh.[31] New CSP stations may be economically competitive with fossil fuels.
Nathaniel Bullard, a solar analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, has calculated that the cost of electricity
at the Ivanpah Solar Power Facility, a project under construction in Southern California, will be lower than that
from photovoltaic power and about the same as that from
natural gas.[32] However, in November 2011, Google
announced that they would not invest further in CSP
projects due to the rapid price decline of photovoltaics.
5
Google invested US$168 million on BrightSource.[33][34]
IRENA has published on June 2012 a series of studies
titled: Renewable Energy Cost Analysis. The CSP
study shows the cost of both building and operation of
CSP plants. Costs are expected to decrease, but there are
insucient installations to clearly establish the learning
curve. As of March 2012, there were 1.9 GW of CSP
installed, with 1.8 GW of that being parabolic trough.[35]
6
6.1
Incentives
Spain
7 Future
A study done by Greenpeace International, the European Solar Thermal Electricity Association, and the
International Energy Agency's SolarPACES group investigated the potential and future of concentrated solar
power. The study found that concentrated solar power
could account for up to 25% of the worlds energy needs
by 2050. The increase in investment would be from
2 billion euros worldwide to 92.5 billion euros in that
time period.[41] Spain is the leader in concentrated solar power technology, with more than 50 governmentapproved projects in the works. Also, it exports its technology, further increasing the technologys stake in energy worldwide. Because the technology works best with
areas of high insolation (solar radiation), experts predict
the biggest growth in places like Africa, Mexico, and the
southwest United States. It indicates that the thermal
storage systems based in nitrates (calcium, potassium,
sodium,...) will make the CSP plants more and more
protable. The study examined three dierent outcomes
for this technology: no increases in CSP technology, investment continuing as it has been in Spain and the US,
and nally the true potential of CSP without any barriers
on its growth. The ndings of the third part are shown in
the table below:
11
REFERENCES
10 See also
Eect on wildlife
Thermoelectricity
Total Spectrum Solar Concentrator
11 References
[1] Sunshine to Petrol. Sandia National Laboratories. Retrieved 11 April 2013.
[2] Integrated Solar Thermochemical Reaction System.
U.S. Department of Energy. Retrieved 11 April 2013.
12
inspired
2011.
[45] A Study of Very Large Solar Desert Systems with the Requirements and Benets to those Nations Having High Solar Irradiation Potential. geni.org.
[46] Solar Resource Data and Maps. Solareis.anl.gov. Retrieved on 22 April 2013.
[47] http://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/
burned-birds-become-new-environmental-victims-energy-quest-n184426
[48] http://www.esquire.com/blogs/news/
solar-plant-dead-birds-081914
[49] http://www.foxnews.com/science/2014/08/18/
california-weighing-bird-deaths-from-concentrated-solar-plants-as-it-considers/
[50] http://bigstory.ap.org/article/
emerging-solar-plants-scorch-birds-mid-air
[51] http://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/green-tech/solar/
ivanpah-solar-plant-turns-birds-into-smoke-streamers
[52] http://www.west-inc.com/reports/avian_collisions.pdf
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External links
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13.2
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