A CO 2 -capturing hybrid-type power generation system with highly e cient use of solar thermal energy was proposed and its characteristics were investigated. In the system, relatively low temperature saturated steam is produced using solar thermal energy and is used as the working uid of a methanering gas-turbine system. The solar thermal utilization e ciency becomes considerably high compared ...

The use of photovoltaic (PV) cells in domestic and industrial applications has grown rapidly through the recent years. Constructing PV plants is a very smart measure to produce free electricity in large scales, especially in the countries with higher solar irradiation potential. On the other hand, compressed air energy storage (CAES) has already been proposed to be employed for energy storage a...

Parabolic trough solar power plants use a thermal fluid to transfer thermal energy from solar radiation to a water-steam Rankine cycle in order to drive a turbine that, coupled to an electrical generator, produces electricity. These plants have a heat transfer fluid (HTF) system with the necessary elements to transform solar radiation into heat and to transfer that thermal energy to the water-s...

An integrated solar combined cycle (ISCC) is analyzed at "off-design" operating conditions. Using the principles of thermodynamics heat and mass transfer a computer code is developed in FORTRAN programming language to simulate the system’s hourly performance under steady state conditions. Three scenarios are considered for the study. In the first one, only the combined cycle (CC) is studied. In...

A hierarchical control strategy consisting on a supervisory switching of PID controllers, simpli ed using the c-Means clustering technique, is developed and applied to the distributed collector eld of a solar power plant. The main characteristic of this solar plant is that the primary energy source, the solar radiation, can not be manipulated. It varies throughout the day, causing changes in pl...

Plant transpiration, a process of water movement through a plant and its evaporation from aerial parts especially leaves, consumes a large component of the total continental precipitation (≈48%) and significantly influences global water distribution and climate. To date, various chemical and/or biological explorations have been made to tune the transpiration but with uncertain environmental ris...

A solar chimney power plant consists of four main parts, a solar collector, a chimney, an energy storage layer, and a wind turbine. So far, several investigations on the performance of the solar chimney power plant have been conducted. Among them, different approaches have been applied to model the turbine inside the system. In particular, a real wind turbine coupled to the system was simulated...

Prior to commercial operation, large solar systems in utility-size power plants need to pass a performance acceptance test conducted by the EPC contractor or owners. In lieu of the present absence of standards developed for this purpose, NREL has undertaken the development of interim guidelines to provide recommendations for test procedures that can yield results of a high level of accuracy con...