Performance evaluation of solar-fossil fuel-hybrid parabolic trough power plant in Yemen under different fuel types

Solar thermal energy technologies are promising technologies and when integrating them with fossil fuel power plant the intermittency of sunlight will be overcome. In this paper a model was developed in order to evaluate the performance of hybrid solar-fossil fuel plant in Yemen under different fuel types. The developed model includes three sub-models, the first sub-model estimates the hourly beam radiation based on monthly average clearness indexes, and the second submodel estimates the annual fuel backup required for sustaining the plant operation for 24h and the annual CO2 emissions for the proposed location. The last model calclulates the fuel cost and the LCOE in both cases. The results showed that, hybridization of solar energy with either coal fuel or heavy oil fuel led to reduce the annual fuel consumption and CO2 emission by 17.02%, but the estimated amount of CO2 emissions emit due to burning the coal fuel is higher than the amount of CO2 emissions emit by heavy oil fuel by 35.8% although the heavy oil#6 is considered as worst type of oil fuel. The economic study for the hybrid solar-fossil fuel power plant for the both cases showed that, the LCOE when heavy oil was used is higher than the LCOE when the coal fuel was used by 38.8% because the coal fuel is cheaper than the oil fuel.