The Dynamic Performance of Different Configurations of Solar Aided Power Generation (SAPG)
Abstract
Solar Aided Power Generation (SAPG) is defined as solar heat used to displace extraction steam to preheat the regenerative Rankine cycle (RRC) power plant’s feedwater. In an SAPG plant, heat exchangers (termed as solar preheaters, SP) facilitate the heat exchange between solar heat and feedwater. Depending on the locations of the SPs in the power plant, an SAPG plant can have different configurations. In order to respond to solar variations, SAPG plants can be controlled using different approaches. The performance of SAPG plants with different configurations and controlled using a different approach has been compared by using real solar radiation data from Adelaide, Australia. Solar radiation data from two consecutive periods of five days during summer and winter were used for simulation. The results show that the performances of the SAPG plant with different configurations and approaches to control are different, and there is an optimum configuration and approach to control for the SAPG plant.
Keywords
Solar aided power generation, Plant configurations, Series configuration, Parallel configuration, Dynamic performance.