Energy 29 (2004) 947959

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Trough integration into power plantsa study on the performance and economy of integrated solar combined cycle systems
Ju rgen Dersch a,, Michael Geyer b, Ulf Herrmann b, Scott A. Jones c, Bruce Kelly d, Rainer Kistner e, Winfried Ortmanns a, Robert Pitz-Paal a, Henry Price f
Solare Energietechnik, German Aerospace Center (DLR), D-51170 Ko ln, Germany b FLABEG Solar International, Mu hlengasse 7, D-50667 Ko ln, Germany c Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM 87185-0703, USA d Nexant Inc., 44 Montgomery, Suite 4100, San Francisco, CA 94104-4814, USA e Milenio Solar S.A., Avda. de la Paz 41, E-04720 Aguadulce (Almeria), Spain National Renewable Energy Laboratory, 1617 Cole Blvd., Golden, CO 80401-3393, USA
a

Abstract Parabolic trough solar technology has been proven at nine commercial Solar Electric Generating Systems (SEGS) power plants that are operating in the California Mojave desert. These plants utilize steam Rankine cycle power plants, and as a result, most people associate parabolic trough solar technology with steam Rankine cycle power plant technology. Although these plants are clearly optimized for their particular application, other power cycle designs may be appropriate in other situations. Of particular interest is the integration of parabolic trough solar technology with combined cycle power plant technology. This conguration is referred to as integrated solar combined cycle systems (ISCCS). Four potential projects in India, Egypt, Morocco, and Mexico are considering the ISCCS type solar power cycle congurations. The key questions are when is the ISCCS conguration preferred over the SEGS power cycle conguration and how is the ISCCS plant designed to optimize the integration of the solar eld and the power cycle. This paper reviews the results of a collaborative eort under the International Energy Agency SolarPACES organization to address these questions and it shows the potential environmental and economic benets of each conguration. # 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Corresponding author. Tel.: +49-2203-6012219. E-mail address: juergen.dersch@dlr.de (J. Dersch).

0360-5442/$ - see front matter # 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/S0360-5442(03)00199-3

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Nomenclature
ann annual electricity output, kW h/a Egen ann present value of annual xed cost, $ FPV fcr xed charge rate tot present value of total investment cost, $ IPV LEC levelized energy cost, $ LHV lower heating value of fuel, kJ/kg _ fuel fuel mass ow rate, kg/s m OMann PV present value of operating and maintenance cost, $/a Pel,net net electrical output, kW Pth,solar thermal input from solar eld, kW annual solar share ss xnet_elec_solar instantaneous net electrical solar fraction

Greek symbols gnet_incr_solar net incremental solar eciency net eciency of the reference power plant gref

1. Introduction Integrated solar combined cycle systems (ISCCS) are modern combined cycle power plants with gas and steam turbines and additional thermal input of solar energy from a eld of parabolic troughs. The plant concept was initially proposed by Luz Solar International [1]. Since this time, the subject has been discussed in several publications (e.g. [2,3]). Due to the decision of the Global Environment Facility to provide grants for four ISCCS power plants in India, Egypt, Morocco and Mexico, interest in this kind of power plants increased again [4,5]. Today, solar thermal power plants based on parabolic troughs represent the only solar power plant technology tested on a commercial basis. Therefore, they are promising candidates in providing a signicant contribution to carbon dioxide mitigation. The aim of this paper is to show the advantages and disadvantages of ISCCS compared to SEGS type solar power plants and to conventional combined cycle (CC) power plants. A base solar eld size of 270,320 m2 was used for the performance calculations, because this would be the design size for a 50 MWe SEGS plant at sites like Barstow, California. Whereas the evaluation of fossil red CC plants can be performed by using the mean values of ambient temperature, load and full load hours, ISCCS are considerably more aected by ambient conditions and load proles. Therefore, it is essential to use annual performance calculations for ISCCS plant analysis.

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2. Integrated solar combined cycle systems Most commercial CC plants use a multiple-pressure, reheat steam turbine to improve eciency, but a simplied single-pressure system will be discussed now to illustrate the issues related to the ISCCS. Fig. 1 shows an example of an ISCCS with a single-pressure, reheat steam turbine and heat recovery steam generator (HRSG). Preheated feed water is drawn from the high pressure preheater, evaporated and slightly superheated in the solar steam generator, returned to the HRSG, and together with the steam from the conventional evaporator, nally superheated to the live steam temperature. Steam turbine, preheater, superheater and condenser of an ISCCS have to be larger than the corresponding parts of a CC plant using the same gas turbine type because of the increased steam mass ow for the integrated plant. In comparison to existing Rankine cycle power plants with parabolic trough technology (SEGS) [6], ISCCS plants oer three principal advantages: First, solar energy can be converted to electric energy at a higher eciency. Second, the incremental costs for a larger steam turbine are less than the overall unit cost in a solar-only plant. Third, an integrated plant does not suffer from the thermal ineciencies associated with the daily start-up and shutdown of the steam turbine.

Fig. 1. Scheme of an ISCCS power plant with a single-pressure-reheat steam cycle and the use of solar energy to replace latent heat of evaporation.

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3. Integration issues From a thermodynamic point of view, the solar heat input should be used for the replacement of latent heat and at the highest possible temperature level. The temperature of the heat v transfer uid is limited to 400 C to avoid decomposition; therefore, maximum solar steam temv peratures of about 380 C are possible. Analysis was performed in several steps: plant design, annual performance evaluation, economic and environmental analysis. Since this was a general study not focussing on one specic project, the innite analysis space was limited as follows: . Heat balance calculations were carried out to compare CC, ISCCS, and SEGS plants. . Proven parabolic trough technology using oil as a heat transfer uid to collect the solar energy was used. . Solar eld size was set by the requirements of a 50 MWe SEGS plant. However, this provided a solar share for the ISCCS case very close to the maximum solar share that could be integrated while still maintaining the live steam temperature and pressure requirements for most day and night operation. . Maximum plant output was held constant for CC and ISCCS cases to insure they were compared on an equal basis. . Natural gas, the most common fuel in combined cycle power plants, was used. v . A high-eciency, triple-pressure, single-reheat steam turbine (565 C=125 bar) and HRSG were used. . The solar heat was used at the highest pressure level to make optimal use of the solar power input. . The inuence of a 2-tank molten salt thermal energy storage (TES) system and of duct ring in the heat recovery boiler was considered. . Performance analyses were conducted for two sites, one with a high solar irradiation (Barstow, California) and one with a somewhat lower irradiation (Tabernas, Spain). During the rst step of the investigation process, several plant designs and cycle balance calculations were performed using the commercial computer codes, GateCycle2 [7] and IPSEpro2 [8]. Steady state performance for dierent load cases was calculated. The electrical output from the gas turbine was only inuenced by ambient temperatures. Supplementary ring and thermal storage were considered, because the power plants should be able to follow a load curve even in times of low or without insolation. In the present paper, ve gures of merit are used to evaluate the dierent cycles and load cases. The rst gure of merit is called net incremental solar eciency and is used as a measure for the fuel saved by the solar part of the plant: gnet
incr solar

_ fuel LHV Pel;net gref m Pth;solar

(1)

Here gref is the overall net electric eciency of the combined cycle (CC) reference plant at the same ambient temperature. This is an optimized conventional CC plant using the same gas turbine, but has no solar heat input. Since an ISCCS power plant without solar heat input operates

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in part load, the overall net eciency of a CC reference plant will be higher than the eciency of the ISCCS without solar heat input. Thus, the second term in the numerator of Eq. (1) may be considered as the net electrical output of an optimized CC power plant burning the same amount of fuel as the ISCCS. The second gure of merit, called instantaneous net electrical solar fraction, is based on the net incremental solar eciency: xnet
elec solar

gnet

incr solar Pth;solar

Pel;net

(2)

Using the net incremental solar eciency and the instantaneous net electrical solar fraction, dened as shown above, gives lower values for these gures of merit than dening them based on the electrical output of an ISSC plant without solar radiation. This was the intention of the authors, because it prevents the choice of an ISCCS which produces more carbon dioxide emissions than an optimized CC plant. Fig. 2 shows some results of the cycle balance calculations. The fuel based net electric eciency in this diagram is dened as net electric output of the plant divided by fuel mass ow times LHV. Therefore, the net electric eciency increases up to 68.4% for the ISCCS at design solar input. The steam cycle eciency is dened as electrical power output of the steam turbine generator divided by the overall thermal input to the steam cycle from HRSG and solar eld. This gure of merit may be used as a measure for the process improvement by the integration of solar steam. Looking at the steam cycle eciency solely, the highest value is provided by the ISCCS with full supplementary ring. But, this operation mode has by far the lowest net incremental solar eciency (0%) and thus the highest carbon dioxide emissions per kW h electricity.

Fig. 2. Instantaneous eciencies and solar fraction for an ISCCS power plant in dierent operation modes and for v the CC reference plant at 25 C ambient temperature.

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The results of the steady state calculations were used to generate plant characteristics for the annual performance simulations. Solar radiation and ambient conditions for the specic site are modeled by using a typical meteorological year (TMY) at this site. As main output, the performance calculation delivers annual values such as net electricity production, fuel consumption, annual solar share, dumped solar energy and CO2 emissions. The annual solar share, ss, used in the next chapter was calculated with the following equation: ss 1 annual fuel consumption per kWhISCCS or SEGS annual fuel consumption per kWh CC reference plant (3)

In contrast to the instantaneous net electric solar fraction from Eq. (2), the annual solar share considers the predened load curve as well as start-up and turn down losses, thermal storage charge state, and scheduled and unscheduled outages. Therefore, it will be considerably lower than the instantaneous net electric solar fraction.

4. Annual performance results This paper focuses on the results for an ISCCS plant in comparison to a SEGS plant and a pure combined cycle. For each integration approach, a conguration without TES and another with TES are presented. Table 1 shows the main technical parameters of the discussed congurations. A base solar eld size of 270,320 m2 was used, because this would be the design size for a 50 MWe SEGS plant at sites like Barstow, California. The nominal electricity output is the same in all ISCCS and CC congurations. The SEGS plants have a relatively lower electricity output as the corresponding ISCCS with the same solar eld size. A back-up system is integrated with the ISCCS and SEGS which allows supplementary ring in periods when no solar energy is available but nominal plant output is required. In addition, two of the congurations have a thermal energy storage, which reduces the use of the duct burner during non-solar periods. For these congurations, the solar eld has to be
Table 1 Main design parameter for some of the investigated congurations Plant type Nominal power (MWe, net) Solar eld size (m2) Fuel type Thermal energy storage (MWht) Fossil back-up system BU thermal output (MWt) Gas turbine power (MWe, gr) Steam turbine power (MWe, gr) Plant eciency, net Total parasitics (MWe) Cooling system SEGS 50 270,320 Natural gas 0 Boiler 139 0.0 50.0 34.7% 3.77 Wet SEGS with TES 50 427,280 Natural gas 839 Boiler 139 0.0 50.0 32.6% 6.54 Wet ISCCS 310 270,320 Natural gas 0 Duct Burner 139 162.0 148.0 68.6% 6.14 Wet ISCCS with TES 310 427,280 Natural gas 839 Duct Burner 139 162.0 148.0 68.1% 8.61 Wet CC 310 0 Natural gas 0 0 201.0 109.0 56.5% 3.77 Wet

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enlarged to collect enough solar energy to charge the storage. This, of course, increases investment cost, but leads to higher solar fractions. The output of the reference CC in Table 1 refers to scaled power plant in order to compare the fuel consumption of the plant to the fuel consumption of the ISCCS. In Fig. 2, the eciencies for dierent loads and operation modes are presented. However, to assess the overall performance of an ISCCS, it is necessary to analyse how many hours per year the plant will operate in the design point and how often at part load. The performance analysis over the whole year provides the solar fraction of the produced electricity and the annual CO2

Fig. 3. Load curves used for the annual performance calculation.

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emissions. The solar fraction, of course, depends on the local weather conditions. Therefore, for a detailed annual performance analysis, the direct normal irradiation (DNI) at the site where the power plant should be built has to be known. In this study, we conducted our analysis for two sites, one with high solar irradiation, Barstow in California (2717 kW h/m2a), and one with a somewhat lower irradiation, Tabernas in Spain (2023 kW h/m2a). A TMY data set has been used, which contains hourly values for the DNI, ambient temperature and wind speed for one complete year. Hence, the annual performance calculation are also carried out in hourly steps. However, only the annual sums are presented below. For a daily and annual performance calculation also the operation strategy of the power plant has to be stipulated. Two strategies are investigated here: a solar dispatching and a scheduled load operation mode. In the scheduled load mode, the plant operation follows a xed demand curve. The used load curves are shown in Fig. 3. The scheduled load curve follows a demand prole, which is typical for many countries. The electricity demand is high during the day and during the evening. During night hours, the demand is somewhat lower. Therefore, the plants operate 16 h at full load and 8 h at 80%. If no solar energy is available to full the load curve, the fossil back-up is used. In the solar dispatching mode, no specic load prole is prescribed. The gas turbine operates at full load for 24 h. The output of the gas turbine then depends only on the ambient temperature and the site elevation. If solar energy is available, the steam turbine is boosted and the total plant output increases. No back-up burner is used in this mode. Fig. 4 shows the results of the annual performance calculation for the ISCCS cases and the CC. The gure gives the annual electricity output and the solar share. For each case, runs were performed for the two sites, California and Spain, and for the load proles presented above. In scheduled load operation mode, the annual electricity production is the same for all congurations, while in solar dispatching operation, the electricity production is aected by the plant

Fig. 4. Results of annual performance calculation for ISCCS and CC.

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conguration and the local weather condition. The output of the CC is the highest in this mode, because the plant operates at full load for 24 h. The ISCCS congurations operate at full load only, when thermal energy is available from the solar eld or the thermal storage. In California, where the solar radiation is higher than in Spain, the output and the solar share of the ISCCS are higher. Also, it can be observed that the solar share is higher in solar dispatching mode than in scheduled load. The scheduled load conguration requires periodic use of the duct burner, which increases the fossil fuel consumption and thereby decreases the solar share. Also, the solar share is higher for congurations with thermal storage than those without TES. In California, solar shares of nearly 10% can be achieved. For a pure combined cycle, the solar share is, of course, 0%. Fig. 5 shows specic carbon dioxide emissions for ISCCS in comparison to SEGS and CC plants for dierent sites, congurations, operation modes and solar eld areas. All ISCCS congurations show lower carbon dioxide emissions than the corresponding CC reference plants. From Fig. 2, it becomes evident that SEGS plants oer the opportunity of solar-only operation with almost no carbon dioxide emissions if they are operated in solar dispatching mode. Although a small amount of fossil fuel is used for start-up and warming during non-sunshine hours at these plants, the value is beyond the plotting scale of Fig. 2. If 24-h operation is required, SEGS plants without storage would be a very bad solution, at least in Spain, because they would need a lot of supplementary ring with low eciency compared to an optimized CC. Increasing the solar eld size leads to lower specic carbon dioxide

Fig. 5. Specic CO2 emissions for dierent sites, plant congurations, operation modes and solar eld areas.

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emissions for all cases, but because of the high costs of this part, it is not useful to build an arbitrarily large solar eld. Economic details are discussed in the next section. In California and under the load prole used here, SEGS and ISCCS plants have very similar specic CO2 emissions if they are built without a storage. Adding a thermal storage would decrease the specic carbon dioxide emissions of SEGS plants in the scheduled load operation mode.

5. Economic analysis The driving force for the integration of parabolic troughs into conventional power cycles is to replace some of the fossil fuel by renewable sources and thus reduce the greenhouse gas emission (GHG) of a combined cycle power plant. However, power generation from renewable resources is normally associated with higher initial investment costs and lower operation costs. The objective of this economic analysis is to assess the cost eciency of ISCCS power plants, determine the economics of dierent solar integration alternatives and compare it with conventional power generation systems. For the comparative assessment, two levelized energy costs (LEC) were used as the gures of merit. The LEC is the present value of the life-cycle costs converted into a stream of equal payments. As an advantage, the LEC cost gure allows an economic evaluation of dierent power generating technologies with varying capacities, full load hours, lifetime, etc. The computed LEC values for power generation systems can be signicantly inuenced by the methodology and assumptions employed. A widespread methodology for the LEC calculation is the approach outlined in [9]. The methodology applied here is based on that approach but is slightly modied. The goal of this study is a project independent assessment of dierent integration options; thus, any project-specic data (e.g. tax inuences, depreciation, etc.) should be disregarded. The LEC values have been calculated according to the following equation: LEC
tot ann IPV fcr OMann PV FPV ann Egen

(4)

Beside the methodology, the determination of realistic input assumptions has a signicant inuence on the LEC results. The general parameters and assumptions used in the economic analysis are summarized in Table 2. The annual O&M costs, i.e. all operation and maintenance expenses other than fuel expenses, had to be determined from case to case since it contains a xed component and an outputdependent component. The annual values uctuate for the ISCCS between 6.6 million US$ per year and 7.5 million US$ per year. LEC calculations for an ISCCS plant with and without thermal storage for a project site in Barstow (California) and one in Tabernas (Spain) were performed. The LEC increase for cases with a higher solar share but the calculated values are very similar for all ISCCS plants investigated here (from 3.9 to 4.2). This is due to the fact that the LEC are dominated by the fossil part of the plants. In order to determine the costs of a solar generated kWh, the LEC of the ISCCS plant has to be divided into a solar LEC and a conventional LEC. The last named corresponds to the power generating costs of reference CC (LECref.CC) with the same capacity and the same load

J. Dersch et al. / Energy 29 (2004) 947959 Table 2 General parameters for LEC calculation (base case scenario) Item Constant value real discount rate Lifetime of ISCCS plant and reference plant Fuel price (Gas) Annual fuel price escalation rate Annual ination rate Spec. investment costs for solar field HTF system Spec. investment costs for conventional CC Spec. investment costs for conventional components of ISCCS Spec. investment costs for thermal storage Base year for discounting Parameter 6.5 25.0 11.1 1.26 2.0 2.5 220.0 550.0 600.0 35.0 2002 Units % years US/m3 US/kWhth % % US$/m2 US$/kW US$/kW US$/kWhth

957

prole. By means of the solar share, ss, the solar LEC can be calculated according to the following equation: LECsolar LECISCCS or SEGS 1 ss LECref :CC ss (5)

In Fig. 6, solar LEC are plotted. The results show that ISCCS plants will have lower solar LEC than SEGS plants at the same site and the same operating scheme. This dierence becomes

Fig. 6. Solar LEC for dierent sites, plant congurations, operation modes and solar eld areas.

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more signicant for the scheduled load operation mode. Furthermore, solar LEC are lower for ISCCS in scheduled load operation than in solar dispatching operation mode in most of the cases. In Spain, without a thermal storage, this is only valid for the largest solar eld size investigated. In contrast to this, SEGS solar LEC are higher in scheduled load than in solar dispatching mode. This is due to the large amount of fossil fuel which has to be used with low eciency during night times when SEGS plants are operated 24 h a day. The investment on a thermal storage for ISCCS plants seems to be useful, because the solar LEC are about 10% 15% lower with a thermal storage. 6. Conclusions ISCCS provide an interesting way of solar electricity generation. If properly designed and operated in the design manner, ISCCS plants show lower specic CO2 emissions than optimized CC plants at the same site and under the same operating conditions. ISCCS provide a better solution than SEGS plants, if 24-h operation a day is required. This is valid if both types have no thermal storage. If the ISCCS plants are supposed to have high eciencies at times without solar energy input, the fraction of solar thermal input is limited. In this study, a triple-pressure single-reheat cycle was used with an instantaneous net electrical solar fraction of 17.5% at design point. Under excellent solar conditions as in the Californian Mojave desert, this results in an annual solar share of 5.6% without and 9.4% with a thermal storage. These values are valid for solar dispatching operation mode which means that the plant can use all incoming solar energy without any restrictions on load management. For sites with lower insulation or for scheduled load operation, the solar share values are even lower. SEGS plants are able to deliver higher annual solar shares and they are suitable technology if solar-only plants are required and no load restrictions prevail. With thermal storage technology available in a commercial scale, SEGS plants may even be used in load scheduling mode with considerable load demand during non-sunshine hours. Acknowledgements The authors wish to thank the International Energy Agency SolarPACES organization for supporting this cooperative project. Sandia National Laboratories contributions were supported by the US Department of Energy under contract DE-AC04-94AL85000. References
[1] Johansson TB, et al., editors. Renewable energy, sources for fuels and electricity. Washington, DC: Island Press; 1993, p. 2345. [2] Solar Thermal Electricity in the Mediterranean, EU Contract APAS-RENA CT94014, Final Report. European Union, 1994. [3] Allani Y, Favrat D, von Spakovsky MR. CO2 mitigation through the use of hybrid solar-combined cycles. Energy Conversion Manage 1997;38:S6617.

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[4] Rheinla nder J, Horn M, Fu rme hring H. GuD-Kraftwerk mit integriertem Solarsystem. Brennsto Wa Kraft 2001;53(6):558. [5] Kelly B, Herrmann U, Hale MJ. Optimization studies for integrated solar combined cycles. Proceedings of Solar Forum 2001; Solar Energy: The Power to Choose, Washington, DC, April 2125. 2001. [6] KJC Operating Company. Boron, CA 93516. See also: http://www.kjcsolar.com/. [7] Heat balance and process simulation package IPSEpro: http://www.SimTechnology.com/. [8] Heat balance and process simulation package GateCycle: http://www.gepower.com/enter/. [9] International Energy Agency (IEA). Guidelines for the economic analysis of renewable energy technology applications. 1991.