Solar thermal power & gas turbine hybrid

design with molten salt storage tank

Cite as: AIP Conference Proceedings 1850, 160017 (2017); https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4984551
Published Online: 27 June 2017

Fernando Martín, Ralf Wiesenberg and Domingo Santana

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AIP Conference Proceedings 1850, 160017 (2017); https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4984551 1850, 160017

© 2017 Author(s).
 Solar Thermal Power & Gas Turbine Hybrid Design with
Molten Salt Storage Tank
Fernando Martín1,a), Dr Ralf Wiesenberg2,b) and Domingo Santana3,c)
1
Industrial Engineer, Energy Consultant, ÅF Aries Energía, Spain
2
Head of Renewable Energy, ÅF Aries Energía, Spain
3
Carlos III University of Madrid, Department of Thermal and Fluid Engineering, Spain
a)
fernando.martin@afconsult.com
b)
ralf.wiesenberg@afconsult.com
c)
dsantana@ing.uc3m.es

Abstract. Taking into consideration the need to decelerate the global climatic change, power generation has to shift from
burning fossil fuel to renewable energy source in short medium period of time. In this work, we are presenting a new
model of a solar-gas natural hybrid power cycle with the main aim of decoupling the solar generation system from the
gas turbine system. The objective is to have high solar power contribution compared to conventional ISCC plants [2],
producing firm and dispatchable electricity at the same time. The decoupling is motivated by the low solar contribution
reached by the ISCC, which is technically limited to maximum of 15%, [4]. In our case, we have implemented a solar
tower with molten salts as working fluid. Central receiver systems get higher performance than others systems, like
parabolic trough technology [1], due to the higher temperature achieved in the heat transferred fluid HTF, close to 560ºC.

INTRODUCTION
The reason to design a hybrid cycle is to cope with the rise of variable renewable energy sources like PV and
wind in power systems of decarbonized economies. PV and wind will require highly flexible power production from
others RES sources, which can be delivered by the presented CSP plant configuration. These systems allow high
operational flexibility and dispatchability. Furthermore, it offers even firm electricity following the electric demand.
Solar-gas hybrid plants offer more stability and higher efficiency than those operating with sun as the only
source of energy.
The proposed power plant configuration has been integrated with thermal energy storage (TES) to increase the
system’s availability as it allows electrical generation during nighttime and cloudy weather [3]. The solar system is
supported by a gas turbine system as way to maintain a steady electricity supply, due to the quickness and
straightness for running up the turbine instead of coal or biomass. Furthermore, the heat of the exhaust gases from
the gas turbine is recovered by a Heat Recovery System (HRS). In the HRS the heat is transferred to the HTF
(molten salts) and carry to the molten salt storage tank, which supplies the steam generator with thermal energy
according to the system control to cover the demand curve.
Below, in the Figure 1, it is plotted a layout of the solar and gas hybrid design studied in this paper.

SolarPACES 2016
AIP Conf. Proc. 1850, 160017-1–160017-7; doi: 10.1063/1.4984551
Published by AIP Publishing. 978-0-7354-1522-5/$30.00

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 FIGURE 1. Overall diagram of the solar and gas turbine hybrid plant

This paper describes the optimization of this new scheme of solar gas hybrid plant, the restrictions in the design
and the operation mode to generate electricity firmly and dispatchable. The focus of the present study is to illustrate
how the system operates in different conditions by using Matlab simulation software. The developed model offers to
select specific parameters of all key components like solar field, receiver, gas turbine, steam turbine, HRS and
thermal storage. For this case study we used the TMY of Casablanca, Morocco and typical summer and winter
electricity demand curves in Morocco.

ASSESSMENT OF SYSTEM DESIGN

In contrast to the ordinary generation plant designs, the proposed plant configuration has been developed to
firmly follow any demand curve by offering manageable and dispatchable electric at any time. The designed
hybridization between gas and solar energy showed that the hybrid system can follow tightly and immediately the
ups and downs of changing demand during the day.

Thus, each one of the operating devices has been designed to work, for most time as possible, close to the
highest performance. In this way, it has been installed a steam turbine whose work rate operates avoiding the
transient peaks of electric demand, so get to be close to a highly performance during most time. These demand peaks
will be supplied by the gas turbine.

System Design
To prevent an oversize of the solar field and an excess of molten salt tanks, a gas turbine system is introduced to
cope with the peaks of electricity on the demand curve. This allows reducing the number of heliostats and the
volume of molten salt tanks. In accordance with the location of the project (longitude, latitude, elevation and time
zone) and the solar field parameters (number of heliostats, reflective area and diameter, and height of the tower
receiver), the model is able to calculate the maximum power in the receiver surface and the solar field layout. These
arrangements take into account the atmospheric attenuations, spillage, heliostat and tower shadowing and cosine
effect.
The steam turbine has been dimensioned to run as long as possible close to the highest performance. Instead, the
gas turbine system has been dimensioned, according to the lower values of the winter demand curve, to be able to

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supply the electricity demanded even if there is not enough energy in the storage tanks and the solar field is
providing no energy.
The arrangement of two separated AC generators in the system, one for the solar generation system and another
for the gas turbine system, allows both technologies to work independently. The heat storage system has been
installed in the middle of the cycle to connect the thermal generation energy part with the power block. This
configuration allows the system to manage the energy supplied and so produce firm and dispatchable electricity at
the same time.
Once the power output of the turbines is decided, the solar field is dimensioned to be able to supply the demand
of the steam turbine during day time and also provide enough thermal energy to be stored in the molten salt tanks for
the night operation of the steam turbine.
The storage tanks are used to store the before mentioned solar energy according to the demand and also be able
to store the energy recovered from the exhausts gases of the gas turbines. Making use of the software developed, the
solar field layout, the volume of the tanks and the flow rates, among other utilities, can be dimensioned and adjusted
according to the requirements of the user.

Restrictions in the Optimization

When optimizing the system, several restrictions are considered to limit some of the cycle´s parameters:
 The maximum temperature of the inlet steam provided to the turbine is limited to 584ºC according to the
brochure manufacturer. This restriction allows determining the size of the steam generator to produce the
full power demanded. The control of the power submitted by the steam generator is carried out by the
control flow rate of the molten salt.
 Prevent the decrease of the steam title in the turbine exhaust below the 0.82 to avoid dew in its last blades
which might lead to corrosion.
 Exhaust temperature of the HRS must be over 70ºC to avoid formation of acids and lead the system to
serious corrosion.
 The efficiency of the heliostat field decreases when its size is passing a threshold. Therefore, the heliostat
fields of solar tower plants are limited to power plant capacities of about 100-150 MWel [4]. This problem is
based on the attenuation, which increase exponentially with the distance. Thus, the largely heliostats situated
further than one kilometer from the receiver, are penalized.
 Tank height cannot be greater than 14 meters [5], due to size of commercial molten salts pumps.
The optimization procedure has been carried out making use of a software tool developed in Matlab
programming environment. Each generation technology, solar field and gas turbine, has been implemented
independently to decouple both systems. The model of the solar power tower plant allows a pre-configuration and
optimization of the main equipment of the system, working fluid flow rates as well as dynamic operation modes. In
case the system needs support to sustain a firm supply, the gas turbine will start up. The software has been designed
as a dynamic model, in which one can choose the operating conditions of the main system components, the location
of the simulation as meteorological conditions (TMY), and other tips to set up the operating modes.
On the other hand, the second power island is working with a steam Rankine cycle. To evaluate the conditions in
each point of the cycle, the software has been linked with different libraries of Matlab with temperatures between 0
K and 973 K and pressures between 0 MPa and 30 MPa according to the IAPWS (International Association for the
Properties of Water and Steam).
To coordinate both energy generator systems (GT and Solar Tower), operation modes have been developed to
describe how the hybrid plant should work in each situation.

DESCRIPTION OF THE PERFORMANCE MODEL

This section shows the different ways to operate the system depending on the environment situations and the grid
requirements. The process flow chart and the different ways to optimize the performance are described in the next
two points below.

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 Operation Modes
One of the possible cost overruns that involves the construction of this plant, is due to the oversizing of the solar
field to try to cover the peaks of daily demand. The idea is to operate the steam turbine to match the highest electric
demand working as most time as possible near to its highest performance rate.
The gas turbine will start up when the storage energy in the molten salt tank is not enough to supply the electric
demand via the steam turbine. In the same way, as the steam turbine cannot operate below its 10% in part load, the
gas turbine will be introduced.

FIGURE 2. Overview operating process flow chart of the solar and gas turbine hybrid plant

The molten salt tanks (cold and hot tanks) play an important role in the control of the system because the HTF
flow rates to the power block, to the solar tower and also to the HRS are interconnected in this subsystem.
In the hypothetic case of the storage tank being full, a specific operation mode will defocus some of the
heliostats in order to maintain the energy balance of the system.

Optimization Parts
The first way to optimize this complex system is to determine the generation operating mode. For this case, the
plant does not work in a special regime, just supplying energy when it is demanded or when it is available, as the
most of the renewable plants, but works firmly supplying energy following an electric demand curve.
The steam turbine always runs close to its maximum performance; instead, the gas turbine will be introduced to
enable a firm supply following the fluctuation of the demand. The control of the power dispatched will be carried
out by the steam flow rate sent from the steam generator, and besides, by the relative variation of the turbine blades
caused by a work in a part-load efficiency.
Note: It is supposed that the steam sent from the steam generator of the hot storage tank remains constant in
optimal conditions of temperature and pressure over time.

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 TESTING RESULT
The aim of the project is to find out a plant configuration where the plant works with maximum solar
contributions and avoids burning natural gas. Also, this design must be able to offer firm electricity at the lowest
LCOE.
Using of the developed software model, different designs have been simulated with the goal of finding out the
optimal size of the solar field and storage tanks.
For the presented case, the software is tested using Casablanca (Morocco) as the geographic location. As external
input parameters a Typical Meteorological Year (TMY) for this location together with the typical winter and
summer demand curve for Morocco have been used.
The maximum peak demand of the summer demand curve has been set to 100MWel, meaning that a hypothetical
PPA would have a maximum value of 100MW and a dispatch profile in accordance to the system demand profiles in
Summer and Winter.
As it is showed below, the demand curve for both seasons is, for the major part of the day, close to 100MWel.
Thus, for this case, a commercial steam turbine of 100MWel has been selected.

Summer Solar Supply Winter Solar Supply
100 100
Power Demanded (MW)

80
Summer
Power Demanded (MW) 80
Winter
60 Demand (MW) 60 Demand (MW)
Solar Power Solar Power
40 Net Generated 40 Net Generated
20 Gas Turbine 20 Gas Turbine
Net Generated Net Generated
0 0
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22
Time (Hours) Time (Hours)
(a) (b)
FIGURE 3. Electric demand supplied for two days in Casablanca. (a) Summer demand, (b) Winter demand.

During summer periods, the storage system has to handle enough solar thermal energy to work 24 hours a day
following the demand curve.
The decrease of the solar irradiation during the winter season forces the gas turbine to start up covering the night
time, cloudy periods and some peaks of demand.
The graph below represents the trend of the solar capacity factor as function of different values of the storage
tank capacity and the different sizes of the solar field.

Trends of Solar Capacity Factor
70
Time Storage   
Solar Capacity Factor

60 Case 
CASE1 (Hours) 
50
CASE2 Case 1  0   
40 CASE3 Case 2  3   
30 CASE4
Case 3  7   
20 CASE5
CASE6 Case 4  10   
10
Case 5  12   
0
1 1,5 2 2,5 3 Case 6  15   
Solar Field Ratio

(a) (b)
FIGURE 4. (a) Overview of the trend graph of solar capacity factor. (b) Cases of thermal storage capacity.

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 After running many simulations, it has been determined that the increase of the storage volume allows having
highest solar contribution and decreasing the theoretical price of the electricity produced.
However, a certain threshold appears which limits to increase the solar field area as this causes a decrease in
efficiency as discussed before. As one can appreciate in the graph, the solar factor begins to flatten from 2.5 times
the solar field ratio. In the same way, the rise of the molten salt tank volume, over the 12 hours of storage, is also
limited to an upper boundary from where the oversizing starts to be unprofitable.
For the studied case located in Casablanca (Morocco) the proposed system has a solar contribution factor of 61%
per year. The results of the annual electric generation simulation are presented in the table below.
TABLE 1. Annual electric generation supplied by solar field and natural gas turbine in Casablanca.
Monthly  Solar Contribution  Natural Gas Contribution
Month  Production 
(MWh)  (MWh)  (%)  (MWh)  (%) 
January  51228  27842  54.35%  23386  45.65% 
February  51228  32289  63.03%  18939  36.97% 
March  51228  40477  79.01%  10751  20.99% 
April  59891  39954  66.71%  19937  33.29% 
May  59891  43757  73.06%  16134  26.94% 
June  59891  59891  100.00%  0  0.00% 
July  59891  59891  100.00%  0  0.00% 
August  59891  59891  100.00%  0  0.00% 
September  59891  50243  83.89%  9648  16.11% 
October  51228  30821  60.16%  20407  39.84% 
November  51228  27890  54.44%  23338  45.56% 
December  51228  24865  48.54%  26363  51.46% 
Total Annual  639523  470617  60.70%  168906  39.30% 

CONCLUSION
The developed model has shown that solar hybrid plants can offer firm and dispatchable power to the system
following a demand curve and providing high renewable energy contribution. Furthermore, this layout allows to
decoupling the solar generation system from the gas turbine system and thus achieve to supply 61% of solar energy
per year. All of these goals could be reached installing 12 hours of storage capacity and a solar factor of 2.5 over the
solar field ratio at least.

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