Renewable Energy 62 (2014) 424e431

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Renewable Energy
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Technical note

Automatic control strategies for hybrid solar-fossil fuel power plants

Armando Fontalvo, Jesus Garcia, Marco Sanjuan, Ricardo Vasquez Padilla*
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Universidad del Norte, Barranquilla, Colombia

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Solar electrical generating systems are a class of solar energy systems which use parabolic trough col-
Received 7 March 2013 lectors (PTC) to produce electricity from sunlight. In order to provide power production, one of the major
Accepted 17 July 2013 challenges is to held the collector outlet temperature or steam temperature around of a specified set
Available online 24 August 2013
point by adjusting the flow rate of the heat transfer fluid (HTF) within upper and lower bounds. In some
cases, an auxiliary heater can be used to provide heat in absence of solar radiation or during cloudy days.
Keywords:
This paper presents a comprehensive study of three control schemes proposed to keep the steam
PID control
temperature around its set point by adjusting the fuel (propane) and air mass flow rate of the auxiliary
Cascade control
Feedforward control
fossil fuel-fired heater. A non-linear dynamic model was developed in SIMULINKÒ to study the perfor-
Solar power plants mance of each control scheme. Variation of controlled and manipulated variables along with the valve
Hybrid solar power plants signals is presented for a period of a cloudy day. The results showed that the combination of feedforward
Parabolic trough collector and three level cascade control is the best alternative to track the temperature set point. It was also found
that a single three level cascade control without feedforward had less oscillations and low fuel con-
sumption compared to the others control strategies.
Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Solar electric generating systems (SEGS) use parabolic trough
collectors technology (PTC) to produce electricity from sunlight.
Parabolic trough collectors are long rows of mirrors with a para-
bolic shape that concentrates solar energy on an absorber pipe,
typically stainless steel tube with a selective absorber surface, that
passes trough the focus of the parabola. These collectors have a
system that allows them to track the sun by rotating around a
northesouth axis. A thermal oil is used as a heat transfer fluid
(HTF), which circulates trough the absorber pipes and is used to
transfer the energy gained from the solar radiation to the thermal
power cycle. The HTF leaves the PTCs at a specified outlet tem-
perature and after that is pumped to several heat exchangers (See
Fig. 1) where the heat gained is transferred to the working fluid,
water or steam, which is used to drive a steam turbine coupled with
a generator to produce electricity [1].
In order to provide stable power production one of the major
challenges is to keep the collector outlet temperature or steam
* Corresponding author. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Universidad del
Norte, Km 5 Via Antigua Pto Colombia, Barranquilla, Colombia. Tel.: þ57 5 3509272;
fax: þ57 5 3509255.
E-mail addresses: aefontalvo@uninorte.edu.co (A. Fontalvo), jesusmg@
uninorte.edu.co (J. Garcia), msanjuan@uninorte.edu.co (M. Sanjuan), rvasquez@
uninorte.edu.co (R.V. Padilla).
temperature near to a specified set point, by adjusting the flow rate
of the HTF. The HTF temperature at collector outlet is affected by
variations in the sun intensity, the HTF temperature at collector
inlet and its volumetric flow rate. The ambient conditions, specially
variations in ambient temperature and wind speed also influence
the outlet temperature but their influence is small [1].
During recent years, many control methods have been employed
in Concentrated Solar Power applications to overcome the prob-
lems caused by the intermittent nature of solar radiation [2]. The
use of PID controllers has been studied but the results have showed
that the traditional ZieglereNichols tuning method for PID pro-
duces an unstable closed-loop system [3] and PID controllers with
fixed tuning parameters have been usually restricted as backup
controllers [2]. On the other hand, feedforward controllers are used
in industrial applications to correct the effect caused by external
and measurable disturbances, in fact new generation solar plants
with direct steam generation are implementing PID controllers
combined with feedforward controllers [4,5]. Cascade control,
another traditional control technique, is used in solar power plants
because it splits the control problem in two scales and two or more
control loops, employing a master control loop which controls the
process output and slaves control loops that measure intermediate
variables and cancel the effects of the disturbances before the
controlled variable is affected [2,6].
Advanced control schemes have also been implemented [7].
Johansen et al. [8] implemented a gain-scheduled pole placement

0960-1481/$ e see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.renene.2013.07.034
 A. Fontalvo et al. / Renewable Energy 62 (2014) 424e431 425

Nomenclature
$
Q
$
heat transferred [kW]
V volumetric flow rate [m3/s]
Aabs, surf surface area per unit length [m]
Cp specific heat capacity at constant pressure
[kJ/kg  K]
D diameter [m]
Lcol length [m]
n number of collectors
T temperature [K]
V volume [m3]
r HTF density [kg/m3] Fig. 2. Heat transfer in HCE for the simplified model. Adapted from Ref. [12].
abs absorbed, absorber
amb ambient
col collector strategy that improves the results achieved by other classical
Exp expansion vessel strategies [7].
furn furnace As it was mentioned, all previously described techniques were
HTF heat transfer fluid focused on controlling the solar collector outlet temperature by
in collector inlet varying the heat transfer fluid (HTF) flow rate (the manipulated
Loop collector loop variable) through the collector field [11] but no auxiliary backup
out collector outlet was considered. On the other hand, modeling the solar collector
surf surface field with an auxiliary fossil fuel-fired heater creates an additional
manipulated variable that could increase the performance of
traditional control schemes. This paper presents a comprehensive
control strategy on a pilot-scale solar power plant, the results study of the performance of three different control schemes to
showed that the gain-scheduled control strategy performs very control the steam temperature that leaves the boiler heat
well because it can effectively handle the nonlinearities of the exchanger by adjusting the fuel and air mass flow rate of the
plant. Farkas and Vajk [9] presented an internal model-based auxiliary fossil fuel-fired heater instead of the HTF flow rate, which
controller (IMC) designed for the operation of a solar power plant was considered as a disturbance variable. These control techniques
and found that IMC met the quality requirement of the plant con- were evaluated in order to determine the system robustness and
trol under clear radiation. Fuzzy logic CONTROL (FLC) was first the best scheme to track the temperature set point when fossil fuel-
applied by Rubio et al. [10], who performed the application of Fuzzy fired auxiliary heater is used in PTCs solar plants.
logic control on a distributed collector field (DSC); the control
system showed high degree of robustness and performance despite 2. Solar plant description
of the variation of its operating conditions. FLC shows a high per-
formance when there is a certain level of uncertainty or when the Solar thermal power plants are systems for power and elec-
knowledge of the process operation can be translated into a control tricity generation by employing solar radiation as a thermal source.

Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of the SEGS VI Solar Thermal Power Plant with fossil-fired backup. Adapted from Ref. [12].
426 A. Fontalvo et al. / Renewable Energy 62 (2014) 424e431
The solar radiation is absorbed by a heat transfer fluid (HTF), which
is usually thermal oil. Four types of concentrated solar power sys-
tems (CSP) can be used: parabolic trough collectors (PTC), linear
Fresnel reflector system (LF), power tower or central receiver sys-
tem (CRS), and dish/engine system (DE) [12].
For the current article, the solar electricity generation system
(SEGS) VI was taken as reference. SEGS VI is located at Mojave
Desert in California and works with therminol VP1 as HTF and LS-2
parabolic trough collectors. The LS-2 solar collector is 50 m long
and has an aperture width of 5 m and a concentration ratio of 70:1.
PTCs are distributed in a solar field, which is composed of several
rows of single axis tracking that form a loop where flows a fraction
of the HTF mass flow rate. SEGS is composed by 50 loops and each
loop has 16 PTCs. Finally, the total area covered by the PTCs is
188,000 km2 [13]. A summary of the SEGS Power Plant is presented
in Table 1. A schematic diagram of the solar thermal power plant
with fossil backup is shown in Fig. 1.
As it was mentioned above, the solar field provides the heat for
vapor generation. The HTF flows through a heat collector element
(HCE), where the incoming solar radiation is concentrated and
absorbed by the thermal oil. HCE typically is composed by a
stainless steel tube surrounded by a glass envelope. The steel tube
is coated with a selective surface with high absorptivity and low
emissivity (see Fig. 2). The glass envelope is a glass pipe with anti-
reflective properties and between the absorber and the glass en-
velope, a vacuum enclosure is used to reduce heat losses between
the absorber and its surroundings and protect the absorber surface
from oxidation [14]. Conventional glass to metal seals and metal
bellows is used to obtain the necessary vacuum enclosure and
flexibility for the simultaneous thermal expansion between glass
envelope and absorber [15]. After the HTF is heated, the HTF leaves
the collectors and the energy gained is transferred to the power
cycle, which is a Regenerative Rankine Cycle [16]. HTF flows
through several heat exchangers (HX): preheater, where com-
pressed water coming from a closed feedwater heater is heated up
until saturated liquid condition is reached; boiler where the satu-
rated liquid that comes from the preheater is heated until a change
of phase from liquid to vapor occurs; finally, superheater where
additional energy is added to the steam, bringing it to a super-
heated vapor condition. The superheated steam is then expanded
through the high pressure turbine. Other important component of
the solar field system is the expansion vessel, which works as a heat
storage element, especially at night and cloudy days and also pro-
vides space for expansion of the HTF due to the change in volume
when the HTF is heated up in the solar field to the operating
temperature [13].
3. Dynamic model of the PTC solar power plant
A simplified model of the power plant with auxiliary heater is
shown in Fig. 1. The system is composed by five elements: the solar
Table 1
Characteristics of SEGS VI Power Plant Ref. [13]. Thermal gross output, net power and
net electric output were obtained for radiation values of 20 June of 1998 Ref. [1].
Location Mojave desert (California)
HTF Therminol VP1
Collector technology LS-2
Solar field size 188.000 km2
Startup year 1988
Capacity (net) 30 MW
Design solar field supply temperature 390  C
Thermal gross output 100e110 MW
Net power output 30e35 MW
Net electric output 29e30 MW
field, which is an arrangement of 50 loops of 16 PTCs, an auxiliary
heater that supplies the amount of energy to keep the steam
temperature at the desirable value, an expansion vessel that works
as a storage energy system, a heat exchanger that represents the
steam generation system, where water is heated and boiled, and
finally a HTF pump. In order to simulate the solar system, a
simplified model based on energy balances combined with heat
transfer analysis is performed and differential equations are ob-
tained. The model is based on the equations presented by Stuetzle
obtained for the SEGS VI located at the Mojave desert in California.
A detailed description of the model can be found in Ref. [1].
For the auxiliary heater propane (C3H8) is used as fuel. Propane
is an energy-rich gas which is one of the liquefied petroleum gases
(LP-Gas or LPGs) that are found mixed with natural gas and oil.
Propane and other liquefied gases, including ethane and butane, are
separated from natural gas at natural gas processing plants, or from
crude oil at refineries. Although propane accounts for less than 2
percent of all energy used in the USA and Canada, it has some very
important uses: propane is the most common source of energy in
rural areas that do not have natural gas service. This is especially
useful in developing countries where there is insufficient infra-
structure to transport natural gas, and therefore the effect of using
propane as fuel in the auxiliary heater need to be studied and
evaluated.
3.1. Solar field
After an energy balance on the solar field the following differ-
ential equation for the HTF collector outlet temperature is
obtained:
dTout ðtÞ
rCp Vcol ¼ Qgain ðtÞ þ Lcol ½qabs ðtÞ  qamb ðtÞ (1)
dt
The energy gained by the HTF is given by the following
expression:
Qgain ðtÞ ¼ rCp V_ HTF Tin ðtÞ  rCp V_ HTF Tout ðtÞ (2)
Eq. (1) can be written in terms of HTF between the entrance and
the exit temperature of the solar field:
dTout ðtÞ
rCp Vcol ¼ rCp V_ HTF Tin ðtÞ  rCp V_ HTF Tout ðtÞ
dt
 (3)
þ Lcol q0abs ðtÞ  q0amb ðtÞ
The solar field is composed by several loops, each one of them
composed by several parabolic trough solar collectors. The total
energy gained by the HTF is proportional to the volume contained
in the solar field (Vcol), which is calculated by Eq. (4):
p
Vcol ¼ D2abs Lloop $nloop (4)
4
where Dabs is the diameter of the absorber pipe, Lloop is the total
length in one loop, and nloop is the number of loops in the solar
field. The overall heat transfer loss to the environment per unit
length, q0amb ðtÞ is given by:
q0amb ðtÞ ¼ hamb A0abs;surf ½Tout ðtÞ  Tamb ðtÞ (5)
In this equation a constant overall heat transfer coefficient of
hamb ¼ 2.5 W/m2 K is used and the surface area per unit length is
A0abs;surf ¼ p$Dabs . It is important to point out that this overall
convective coefficient, hamb, includes radiation and convection [1].
 A. Fontalvo et al. / Renewable Energy 62 (2014) 424e431 427

3.2. Expansion vessel Stuetzle [1] introduced a factor, sε ¼ 100 s, to adjust the time
constant of this differential equation to the time constant range of
The expansion vessel temperature is determined by the next the entire system in order to avoid a stiff differential equation
expression [1]: system. The heat exchanger effectiveness is calculated by Ref. [1]:
" #
dTexp ðtÞ 0:1 V_ HTF ðtÞ mðtÞ
_
rCp Vexp ¼ rCp V_ HTF Tfurn ðtÞ  rCp V_ HTF Texp ðtÞ (6) εðtÞ ¼ 1:025  þ (16)
dt 2 V_ HTF;0 m _0
For SEGS VI, the expansion vessel volume is Vexp ¼ 287.7 m3.

3.3. Heat exchanger 3.4. Auxiliary fossil fuel system

The energy balance on the heat exchanger is as follows [1]: Originally the auxiliary system was not modeled by Stuezle [1].
In this paper a simplified model is used to introduce the dynamic
dTin ðtÞ
rCp VHE ¼ rCp ðaA þaB ÞV_ HTF Texp ðtÞ rCp ðaA þaB ÞV_ HTF Tin ðtÞ behavior of the backup system. The new energy balance on the HTF
dt is as follows:
LHE qtransf ðtÞ
dTfurn ðtÞ
(7) rCp Vtubes ¼ rCp V_ HTF Tout ðtÞ  rCp V_ HTF Tfurn ðtÞ  qfurn ðtÞ
dt
where aA ¼ aB ¼ 0.4375 [13] and: (17)

qtransf ðtÞ ¼ hHE ðtÞAHE;surf ½Th ðtÞ  Tc ðtÞ (8) where qfurn(t) is the heat transferred to the HTF from the flue gases
coming from the fossil-fuel-fired furnace. Zhang et al. [17] devel-
Th(t) and Tc(t) are the mean temperatures of the HTF and the oped a linear dynamic model for the furnace. They used full-scale
steam respectively in the heat exchanger. The temperatures pre- computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations to generate the
viously mentioned can be calculated from the following equations required small signal input and output data sets, and a least squares
[1]: based system identification technique to obtain the linear dynamic
model. The transfer function for the heat as a function of the fuel
1

Th ðtÞ ¼ Texp ðtÞ þ Tin ðtÞ (9) mass flow rate is:
2
21524
1 GQ
_ ðsÞ ¼ (18)
Tc ðtÞ ¼ ½Tsteam ðtÞ þ Twater ðtÞ (10)
m fuel s þ 0:6363
2
where m _ fuel is the mass flow rate of fuel, propane (C3H8) in this
The heat transfer coefficient, hHE(t), depends on the two flow
rate measurements available from SEGS VI [1]: case, in kg/s and the heat is in kW. On the other hand, the transfer
function for the heat as a function of the air mass flow rate is:
" #
74; 000 V_ HTF ðtÞ mðtÞ
_ W
hHE ðtÞ ¼ , þ (11) 12:92ðs þ 0:0701Þ
2 _
V HTF;0 m _ m 2 $K GQ
_ ðsÞ ¼ (19)
0 m air ðs þ 0:42Þðs þ 0:0819Þ

where m _ is the mass flow rate of the working fluid (water or steam). where m _ air is the mass flow rate of air, in kg/s and the heat is in kW.
For SEGS VI, the reference flow rate of the HTF is For the power plant system, the mass flow rate of fuel was calcu-
V_ HTF;0 ¼ 0:624 m3 =s and the reference mass flow rate of the lated for the mean absorbed radiation of 1667 W/m, which corre-
working fluid is m _ 0 ¼ 39:9 kg=s [1]. The surface area per unit sponds to the maximum value of absorbed radiation measured in
length is given by: December 20 of 1998 for the SEGS VI solar power plant [1]. The
information of solar irradiation and ambient temperature are
AHE;surf ¼ pDHE (12)
shown in Fig. 3.
The volume of the heat exchanger is calculated by:
4. Proposed control strategies
p
VHE ¼ D2HE LHE (13)
4 The solar energy power plants have to deal with the problem of
the intermittent solar radiation, especially during cloudy days.
with an assumed diameter of DHE ¼ 1 m and length of LHE ¼ 10 m.
Automatic control strategies are employed to keep the steam
The temperature of the steam is calculated from the heat exchanger
temperature near its set point or desired temperature. Further-
effectiveness as follows:
more, the collector outlet temperature should not exceed 85  C
Tsteam ðtÞ  Twater ðtÞ above the temperature at collector inlet in order to keep an opti-
εðtÞ ¼ (14) mum power requirement in the solar field [18]. The HTF is exposed
Texp ðtÞ  Twater ðtÞ
to several disturbances: ambient temperature fluctuations, wind
The Eq. (14) can be formulated as a differential equation in order speed and, finally, the variation of solar radiation, due to the
to consider a dynamic behavior and assume the heat exchanger presence of clouds and different seasons throughout the year.
effectiveness, ε(t), to be flow rate dependent. The following differ- Fig. 4 shows the traditional control scheme using a PID-feedback
ential equation is obtained: controller. Although several strategies have been employed for
advanced control, they have in common that the HTF mass flow rate
dTsteam ðtÞ 1

¼ Twater ðtÞ  Tsteam ðtÞ þ εðtÞ Texp ðtÞ  Twater ðtÞ is the manipulated variable, which is used to control the steam
dt sε temperature or the HTF temperature after passing trough the PTCs.
(15) An alternative strategy to control these two temperatures is
428 A. Fontalvo et al. / Renewable Energy 62 (2014) 424e431
Fig. 3. a) Ambient temperature and b) Solar radiation absorbed for December 16th of
1998. Adapted from Ref. [1].
introducing an auxiliary heater after the PTC outlet and a two level
cascade (alternative 1): two slaves PID controllers which control
and manipulate the fossil fuel flow rate and the air flow rate and a
master controller which controls the steam temperature by
adjusting the air flow and fuel flow set point. This alternative
control strategy is shown in Fig. 5.
Fig. 4. Traditional control strategy with PID controller without the auxiliary heater.
Two more control schemes are considered for the current study:
a three level cascade control (alternative 2) and a three level
cascade control plus a feedforward controller (alternative 3). The
three level cascade control scheme arises from the fact that the HTF
at the furnace outlet changes before the steam temperature and it
can be measured and gives feedback to a PID controller that adjust
the set point of the two air flow and fuel flow controllers. The
master control receives the steam temperature measurement from
the sensor-transmitter and if there is a deviation from the set point,
it adjusts the set point of the furnace temperature controller, that
adjust the air flow and fuel flow set point and change the air and
fuel flow rate. This alternative is shown in Fig. 6.
The last control scheme proposed is shown in Fig. 7. The three
level cascade control plus a feedforward controller improves the
performance of the controller by the compensation of the radiation
disturbance before they affect the controlled variable by measuring
the incoming solar radiation.
5. Simulation details
The dynamic behavior of the solar power plant was performed
in SimulinkÒ tool under the MATLABÒ environment. SimulinkÒ is a
simulation tool based on a functional approach. The principle is
based on the connection of several subsystems represented by
transfer functions. This approach allows access to various inter-
mediate parameters with tools for displaying and storing pre-
defined in the standard library. For the simulation of the simplified
model, a block diagram model was built. The tuning parameters of
the PID controllers employed in the control schemes mentioned
above were calculated to produce a specific closed loop response
with 0% overshoot for set point changes [19]. Table 2 summarizes
the parameters considered for the simulation.
6. Results and discussion
Fig. 8 shows the different strategies previously proposed. Ac-
cording to its ability to keep the process near the set point tem-
perature. Alternative 3 (three level cascade control plus a
feedforward controller) has the best performance since the steam
temperature was between 638.2 and 638.7 K. The main concern
about this strategy is that oscillations around set point are pre-
sented when solar radiation and climate conditions changes,
because of the feedforward controller strategy.
The second best strategy is achieved when a three level cascade
control scheme (alternative 2) is considered with PID controllers,
that was also considered in alternative 2. This strategy does not
perform as well as the one with a feedforward controller because it
has not knowledge of the solar radiation effect before it enters to
the process. Finally, alternative 1, where a two level cascade control
with PID controllers is applied with fossil backup, had the lowest
performance since the controlled temperature varies between
622.3 and 644.1 K. All alternatives presented have a better perfor-
mance that the traditional control scheme, which manipulates the
HTF mass flow rate, so the use of fossil fuel-fired auxiliary heater
increases the robustness of the system. However, the traditional
control scheme allows to save cost because it does not involves the
use of fossil fuel.
It can be inferred from the previous results that feedforward
control combined with cascade control improves the performance
of the system and ensure robustness. The single use of feedback to
control steam temperature requires that error is present before that
the controller works. This explains the overshot presented on both
alternatives 1 and 2. However, the use of feedforward and a three
level cascade control in alternatives 2 and 3 involves more pa-
rameters to adjust than the alternative 1, which is more simple.
 A. Fontalvo et al. / Renewable Energy 62 (2014) 424e431 429

Fig. 5. Alternative 1: two level cascade control scheme employing PID controllers.

Fig. 6. Alternative 2: three level cascade control scheme employing PID controllers.

Fig. 7. Alternative 3: three level cascade plus FFC control scheme employing PID controllers.
430 A. Fontalvo et al. / Renewable Energy 62 (2014) 424e431

Table 2
Simulation parameters.

Parameter Value

Average ambient temperature (K) 258

nloop 50
Lloop (m) 753.6
Dabs (m) 0.066
Steam set point (K) 638.5
Water inlet temperature (K) 496.6
Water mass flow rate (kg/s) 39.9
Design fuel mass flow rate (kg/s) 1.024
Percent of excess of air 15
HTF volumetric flow rate (m3/s) 0.624

Therefore, if the overshoot obtained in alternative 1 is acceptable,

this control could be the most appropriated due to its lack of
complexity.
Fig. 9 shows the signals sent to the air and fuel valves. Based on
the signal output the controller behavior, for all alternatives, is soft.

Fig. 9. Valve signal for the manipulated variables.

This behavior is because the tuning parameters of the PID con-

trollers were calculated to produce a response with 0% overshoot,
which it is in essence a soft response. An interesting result is that
the controller output for each control scheme is almost the same,
which it agrees to the response time by the controller. The response
time is influenced by the period of time considered (17 h, between
the 5th and the 22nd hour of the day), the change of the radiation
and the process dead times which are in the range of 5e10 min
according to the differential equations presented below. Fig. 9 also
reveals that the three level cascade control response was very
closed to the feedforward controller, despite the fact that between
the 9e10th hour, and between the 17e18th hour an overshoot was
presented. The measure of the HTF temperature at the heater outlet
helps to obtain a fast response, but the effect of solar radiation has
to enter to the process to produce this response because the
strategy considered only involves feedback control.
Fig. 10 showed that the fuel consumption is almost the same for
all the alternatives considered. This result is logical because of the

Fig. 8. Behavior of the controlled variable, the steam temperature, for different control
schemes: a) All control schemes considered, b) Control schemes with fossil-fuel Fig. 10. Variation of manipulated variables, air and fuel flow rates, for the three al-
backup. ternatives that considers fossil backup. a) Air mass flow rate b) Fuel flow rate.
 A. Fontalvo et al. / Renewable Energy 62 (2014) 424e431
distinct behavior of the controller output described below and
typical control valves are very fast compared to the whole system
considered.
7. Conclusions
A simplified dynamic model of a solar power plant with an
auxiliary heater was presented for the SEGS VI Power Plant. The
simplified model was used to evaluate the performance of three
different control schemes which manipulate the fuel and air flow
rate in order to control the steam temperature that leaves the boiler
heat exchanger. These schemes combined the use of feedforward
and cascade control. After the simulations were performed the
following results were obtained:
 The use of feedforward and a three level cascade control
improved the performance of the system and ensured robust-
ness because of the direct measure of the disturbances: solar
radiation for this case. The measure of an intermediate variable,
the HTF temperature at the heater outlet, helped to obtain a
fast response.
 The fuel consumption was almost the same for all the control
strategies proposed and the use of fossil-fuel-fired auxiliary
heater increased the robustness of the system.
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