Thermodynamic and Enviro-Economic Analyses of Stand-Alone Solar Power Plants

In this article, thermodynamic and enviro-economic analyses of stand-alone solar power plants are carried out. Plants based on concentrating solar power technologies are used to harness the solar radiation effectively. Among the concentrating solar thermal power technologies, line focusing concentrating systems such as Linear Fresnel Reflector (LFR) and Parabolic Trough Collector (PTC) are simple and having high dispatchability for power generation. The thermodynamic and enviro-economic analyses of stand-alone LFR and PTC technologies are carried out for different plant capacities ranging from 1 MWe to 50 MWe. In thermodynamic analysis, energy and exergy efficiencies of the solar power plants are evaluated. The overall energy and exergy efficiencies of 50 MWe linear Fresnel reflector power plant is determined as 12.17% and 17.21% respectively and for parabolic trough power plant is determined as 23.16% and 32.76% respectively. Based on the enviro-economic analysis of 50 MWe stand-alone solar power plant, it is found that about 90647 ton of CO2 can be saved annually with a levelised electricity cost of ` 9.31 and ` 8.02 for linear Fresnel reflector and parabolic trough power plants respectively.