Dynamic Models of Concentrated Solar Power Plant to Response to Utility Demand Profiles

For a solar power plant, storing energy enables utilities to generate power when and as required and not just when sun is shining. There are two popular ways to convert solar energy to electricity – solar photovoltaic (PV) and solar thermal. In a solar PV plant sun’s energy is directly converted to electric energy using solar cells and therefore it requires a battery to store electric energy. A concentrating solar thermal power plant converts solar energy to thermal energy and therefore can store thermal energy which can later be converted to electric energy when required using a turbine generator. Because, today it is cost-effective to store thermal energy than electric energy, solar thermal plants have an advantage. Therefore, there is keen interest from power plant utilities to build large scale concentrating solar thermal power plants (referred to as CSP) that include thermal energy storage (TES).