Assessment of techno-economic potentials for solar thermal energy in South Korea

Abstract

The renewable energy potentials for the country are very important information for the national renewable energy policy and decision-making. This study investigated the technic-economic potential on the solar thermal technology, three different absorbers (compound parabolic collector, linear Fresnel collector and parabolic trough collector) in South Korea. The potentials were calculated using the multicriteria decision-making model with 1 km grid spacing. Results show that the compound parabolic collector was relatively cost-economic technology with the lowest the levelized cost energy value at 373 ∼ 423 K temperature level. When government policy support perform like geothermal and wind energy, the regional solar thermal heating potentials exist predominantly at least 21% of land areas in South Korea.