Global Decarbonisation 3050-0230 Caravel Press 10.17184/eac.9496 2025.007 Techno-economic assessment of solar power tower and solar parabolic dish system in India MandalPradipta me20s050@smail.iitm.ac.in ReddyK. S. ksreddy@smail.iitm.ac.in Heat Transfer and Thermal Power Laboratory, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras Chennai, 600036, India 20062025 1 1 17 20 June 2025 © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Caravel Press. 2025 This is an open access article under the CC BY 4.0 licence.

The article presents a techno-economic analysis and comparison between the solar power tower (SPT) and the solar parabolic dish system (PDS) for the Indian city of Jodhpur. Both of these technologies are integrated with the Rankine cycle-based power conversion block. The simulation is run for the power block in Cycle-Tempo software. The thermal efficiency is obtained as 32%. With ηth = 32% as the input, the technical and economic analyses are carried out. Four economic parameters Net Present Value (NPV), Benefit-to-cost (B/C ratio), Discounted Payback Period (DPP) and Levelized Electricity Cost (LEC) are used in the study. The NPV for SPT and PDS are 335.89 and 252.66 Cr. Rs. respectively. The B/C ratio obtained for SPT and PDS are 3.59 and 2.63 respectively. The DPP obtained for SPT and PDS are 5.58 and 6.77 year respectively. The LEC achieved for SPT and PDS are 1.89 and 2.30 Rs. / kWh respectively. Finally, the sensitivity analysis considering various important parameters such as direct normal irradiance (DNI), discounted interest rate and per square meter reflector cost is performed. It is found that SPT performs better the PDS, both technologically and economically.

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