The Impact of Dispatchability of Parabolic Trough CSP Plants over PV Power Plants in Palestinian Territories

Abstract

This paper investigates the impacts of dispatchability of Parabolic Trough Concentrated Solar Power (PT-CSP) systems over PV power plants in Palestinian territories. Jericho governorate was taken as a case study. All conditions required for implementing PV and PT-CSP systems are verified. The capacity of each investigated system is 1 MW, and both systems are investigated in terms of technical, economic, and environmental aspects. The parametric analysis is used to identify the most feasible option of each renewable energy system by varying the cost of each option candidate and introducing thermal energy storage (TES) to the technology of PT-CSP systems with different capacities. A software based on the MATLAB environment is programmed to estimate the energy produced from each system with the important technical, financial, and environmental indicators. It is found that the alternative of installing a 1 MW PV system is the installation of 1 MWe PT-CSP systems with 14.5 h or 18.5 h TES. Introducing TES improves the dispatchability of the system and the capacity factor which consequently justifies the PT-CSP system investment. Increasing the degree of dispatchability improves the capacity factor of the PT-CSP system from 21% at 0 h TES to 57% at 18.5 h TES (24 h operation). The capacity factor of the PV system is 18.7% which is mostly similar to PT-CSP with zero dispatchability (0 h TES). The study considers the environmental benefits by estimating the amount of avoided CO2 emissions, and it was found that increasing the capacity factor augments the environmental benefits.