Prediction of the time constant of small-scale concentrated solar CHP plants

¹ Centro di Ricerca Energia Ambiente e Territorio (CREAT), Università eCampus, Via Isimbardi 10, 20060 Novedrate (CO), Italy
² DIAEE, Sapienza Università di Roma, via Eudossiana 18, Rome 00184, Italy
³ Società per il TRAsferimento TEcnologico e Guida all’Innovation Engineering, S.TRA.TE.G.I.E. srl, via Sandro Totti 1, Ancona 60131, Italy
⁴ DIISM, Università Politecnica delle Marche, Via Brecce Bianche 1, 60131 Ancona, Italyì
⁵ Department of Mechanical Engineering, KU Leuven, Celestijnenlaan 300, 3001 Leuven, Belgium
⁶ Department Mechanical Engineering and Construction, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 8ST, UK
⁷ GREiA Research Group, Universitat de Lleida, Pere de Cabrera s/n, Lleida 25001, Spain
⁸ Elianto S.R.L., Parco Scientifico e Tecnologico della Sardegna Località Piscina Manna Edificio 1 Pula (CA) 09010, Italy
⁹ Enogia S.A.S, 19 Avenue Paul héroult, Marseille 13015, France
¹⁰ E3G Ingegneria y energia, Av. Estudi General 7, Altell 5, Lleida 25001, Spain
¹¹ User Feedback Program SL, Sant Jaume Apòstol 8, Almenar 25126, Spain
¹² AAVID Thermacore Europe, 12 Wansbeck Business Park Ashington, Northumberland NE63 8QW, UK

^* Corresponding author: luca.cioccolanti@uniecampus.it

Abstract

The operation of a power plant based on solar energy can vary significantly with time because of the intrinsic intermittency of the energy resource. Hence, a smart management is required to deal with the complex dynamic variations of the different subsystems. In order to do that, different control logics can be implemented but their effectiveness strictly depends on the temporal evolution of the parameters considered. For a given plant configuration, their exact estimation can be obtained through experimental tests during the commissioning of the plant. However, any change in the design parameters of the plant reflects in a different time constant, whose preliminary knowledge may be of support in tuning the control logic of the plant during the design stage. Therefore, based on the configuration of a small-scale concentrated solar combined heat and power plant as designed and built under the EU funded project Innova MicroSolar by several universities and companies, in this study a prediction of the time constant of several plant configurations with varying solar multiple and size of the storage tank is performed. By making use of the dynamic simulator previously developed by some of the authors, an estimation of such characteristic is assessed in case of potential redesign of the plant, providing also useful suggestions into the design of the control logic.