Design, optimization and performance comparison of solar tower and photovoltaic power plants

Abstract

This paper compares two main technologies of solar to electrical energy conversion, namely solar tower (ST) and photovoltaic (PV). For a fair comparison, a 100 MW same sized ST and PV plants are designed for a region with very good direct normal irradiance (DNI) and global horizontal irradiance (GHI). The initial design of the ST plant is optimized for solar multiple and thermal energy storage hours, and the PV plant is optimized for the optimal distance between parallel PV arrays. The ST plant has superior annual energy output of 513040.16 MWh compared to 270754.6 MWh from PV plant and capacity utilization factor of 58.6% in comparison to 30.9% from PV plant. On the contrary, the land use factor and solar to electric efficiency (SEE) of the PV plant is superior to ST plant while levelized cost of energy of ST plant is 2.83 times higher than the PV plant. Although ST plant has superior technical performance but way better economic performance of PV plant makes it the stand out solar to electrical energy technology for a location with promising GHI and DNI. This paper provides very useful guidelines for the policymakers to select a particular technology for the future solar-based power generation projects.