Simulation and Experimental Research of 1MWe’s Solar

Tower Power Plant in China

Qiang Yu1, a), Zhifeng Wang1, b) and Ershu Xu1, c)
1
Key Laboratory of Solar Thermal Energy and Photovoltaic Systems, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Institute
of Electrical Engineering, Beijing 100190, China
a)
Corresponding author: yuqiang_21st@sina.com
b)
zhifeng@vip.sina.com
c)
xuershu@mail.iee.ac.cn

Abstract. The establishment of a reliable simulation system for a solar tower power plant can greatly increase
the economic and safety performance of the whole system. In this paper, a dynamic model of the 1MWe’s Solar
Tower Power Plant at Badaling in Beijing, is developed based on the “STAR-90” simulation platform, including
the heliostat field, the central receiver system (water/steam), etc. The dynamic behavior of the global CSP plant
can be capable of simulating based on the simulation system. In order to verify the validity of simulation system,
a complete experimental process was synchronously simulated by repeating the same operating steps based on
the simulation platform, including the locations and number of heliostats, the mass flow of the feed water, etc.
According to the simulation and experimental results, some important parameters are taken out to make a deep
comparison. The results shows that the dynamic simulation process can be followed close with the experiment
process whatever happened during the operation and the error range can be acceptable considering the error of
the models. In the end, a comprehensive and deep analysis on the error source is carried out according to the
comparative results.

Keywords. Solar Tower Power Plant; Simulation; Experiment Research;STAR-90; Error Source

1.Introduction
Concentrating solar power (CSP), which is considered as an environmental friendly, high-efficient,
and relatively inexpensive renewable energy technology, has attracted increasing worldwide attentions [1-2].
In order to promote the CSP’s development, “DAHAN”, the pioneer 1 MW solar thermal power tower plant
in China, is erected by the support of China National Hi-Tech R&D (863 Plan) in 2012 [3-4].
In order to bring down the risk and cost of the plant operation, the system modeling based on real
parameters of each component for the plant is very necessary.The establishment of a reliable simulation
system for a solar tower power plant can greatly increase the economic and safety performance of the whole
system. In this paper, a dynamic model of the 1MWe’s Solar Tower Power Plant at Badaling in Beijing, is
developed based on the STAR-90 simulation platform, including the heliostat field, the central receiver
system (water/steam), etc. And the dynamic behavior of the global CSP plant can be capable of simulating.
In order to verify the validity of the developed simulation system, a random experimental date is selected to
carry out an integrated comparative study. Then, comprehensive error sources of every variable are analyzed
in details according to the comparative results. The results show that the simulation system of the 1MW
DAHAN plant has a relatively good accuracy, and it can provide a complete virtual platform to carry out
research work instead of the real plant to some extent.

2. Modelling of heliostat field and Central receiver

The biggest difference between CSP plant and traditional coal-fired plant is that the boiler is replaced by
the heliostat field and central receiver system. In this paper, these two parts will be introduced in detail.
The collector system of DAHAN consists of 100 heliostats, each with an area of 100 m2(shown in Fig.1
and 2). During the operation, the incident solar rays are concentrated and reflected into a cavity receiver,
which locates on the 78 m level of a 118 m high tower. The dimension of each heliostat which consists of 64
small square mirror elements is 10×10 m, mounted on a 6.6 m high steel pillar.
 FIGURE 1. DAHAN Solar Tower Power Plant FIGURE 2. Heliostat Shape of DAHAN plant
The cavity-type receiver structure is adopted in our tower plant, where the flowing unsaturated water is
changed into the superheated steam by absorbing the concentrated solar energies. The cavity receiver mainly
consists of seven membrane water walls, four superheaters and a drum. The schematic diagram for the
receiver system is depicted in Fig.3.

FIGURE 3. Schematic diagram in the receiver system

The Monte-Carlo ray-tracing method is taken to establish the mathematical model of the heliostat field.
Ray tracing is a statistical method that traces incident rays from the sun to the cavity receiver via mirrors’
reflection by using coordinate transformation. The final solar flux density on the statistic area in the cavity
receiver can be obtained by counting the number of the arriving rays. The detailed modeling process of the
heliostat can be checked in our published paper [5].
The calculating equations are expressed as follows:
N j ×ℜ (1)
Ij =
Sj
DNI (t )∗ lhelio
2
∗ηhelio
ℜ= (2)
Ntr
ηhelio = ηcos ∗ηref ∗ηaa ∗ηs&b (3)
 As to the receiver system, the modular modeling method is adopted to develop the receiver model. The
receiver is a very complicated system which consists of many components. During the modeling, an
integrated receiver model for full range operation conditions was proposed which mainly couples the
radiation–heat conversion process, the determination of convective heat transfer coefficient, the temperature
computation of receiver walls and the calculation and analysis of the thermal losses. The detailed modeling
process of the receiver system can be checked in another published paper [6].
After finishing the modeling, the developed models were coupled together according to the mutual
connection sequence based on “STAR-90”platform, and then the simulation can be executed after specifying
the coefficients of every model and importing the initial boundary conditions.
3. Initial boundary conditions
In this paper, to validate the developed simulation model, the experimental process at a randomly-chosen
operational date of Sep 26 in 2013 is selected. Then, the complete experimental process is synchronously
simulated by repeating the same operating steps based on the simulation platform On that day, the storage
system is not used due to the maintenance. The input conditions for the variation curve of the DNI, the
number of heliostats in progressing, the feedwater mass flow and temperature of the steam drum are shown
respectively in Fig.4

(a) DNI (b) Heliostat field

(c) Feedwater mass flow (d) Feedwater temperature

FIGURE 4. Initial boundary conditions
In order to follow the experimental process, all the input conditions need to be written into the computer
programs as the boundary conditions of the simulation system. As to the heliostat field, the simulation
process will repeat the tracking number and location of heliostats according to the corresponding time points.
After the real-time simulation, the comparative results of some important parameters are shown as follows.
4.Result and Discussion
According to the simulation and experimental results, some important parameters are taken out to make a
deep comparison in the aspect of quantitative values including temperature, pressure and mass flow.
(1)Comparative results of temperature
 (a)Evaporator(3) (b)Superheater(1)

(c)Superheated steam (d)Steam drum

FIGURE 5. Comparative results of temperature
As shown in the figure above, in order to avoid confusion, it is important to point out that only some
representative point are taken out to make a comparison due to plenty of measurament points.

(2)Pressure and Steam mass flow

(a)Pressure (b)Mass flow

FIGURE 6. Comparative results of pressure and mass flow
As shown in Fig.5 and 6, it is noted that no matter experimental or simulation results, the difference
between the experiment and simulation result is relatively acceptable. Besides, the variation tendency of the
simulation result is completely consistent with the experimental result under the disturbance of external
conditions. According to the initial conditions as shown in Fig.4, it seems that the DNI is very smooth, and
there is no big fluctuation during the day. However, it is found that the feedwater is changed frequently due
to the automatic control. Therefore, the violent fluctuations of curves directly result from the frequent
feedwater. When the feedwater pump works, a chain reaction is set into motion, and the value of wall
temperature will go down gradually due to the injection of cool water. Conversely, the temperature will rise
when the injection stops.
5. Error analysis
As shown in these figures mentioned above, on the whole, the variation tendency between simulation
and experimental results can be kept in step under the disturbance of external conditions. However, there are
still some differences on the quantitative comparison at some time. The main error sources are analyzed
below.
(1) Model Error: During the operation, the whole system belongs to a multi-physical process, unsteady state,
multi-variable, strongly nonlinear and complicated coupled system. If all of factors are dealt with a complete
and accurate consideration in the process of system modeling, the models will be very complicated and hard
to be solved. In order to grasp the key points and improve the computing speed, the models are simplified
with linear processing based on lumped parameter method, and hence the errors exist essentially.
(2) It is noteworthy that the experiment results of temperature, pressure and mass flow are just the measuring
values of some positions by using the measuring equipments. However, for the simulation system, the
temperature results are the average value of the specified area. Therefore, the errors already exist before the
comparison.
(3) Manual operation error during the simulation: The simulation process based on the “STAR-90” platform
belongs to the real-time simulation. During the operation, the operating procedure is necessary to be
controlled manually according the corresponding time points, especially for the repeat of tracking process of
heliostat field, and hence the time shift during the simulation is also non-ignorable.
5. Conclusion
In this paper, in order to verify the validity of simulation system developed previously, firstly, a completely
experimental process is repeated according to the real operating procedures. Then, according to the results,
some important parameters: pressure, temperature and mass flow are selected out to make a deep comparison
in the aspect of quantitative values. The results show that the simulation can be followed with the experiment
process whatever happened during the operation, and the comparative results can be acceptable within the
range of permission. Finally, according to the results, the error sources are analyzed in detail. On the whole,
the simulation system can provide a complete virtual platform to carry out the research plan with a relatively
good accuracy instead of the real plant in order to lower the risk. It is also found that, in order to improve the
validity of models, further hard work is necessary in the future.
Acknowledgements

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The work is support by National Natural Science Foundation of China (51306171) and National Basic
Research Program of China (2010CB227106).

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