Investigation of thermal storage options for Concentrating Solar Power plants

Worldwide initiative to transform its energy industry from being based on polluting fossil-fuels into cleaner renewable energy resources is growing. Interest is growing in generating power using Concentrating Solar Thermal Power (CSTP) plants where solar energy is concentrated to heat a working fluid and run the turbine to generate electricity. The paper focuses on the selection process of thermal fluids/salts for thermal storage of a parabolic trough CSTP plant by analyzing their Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE) and power output after each optimization process. Simulation is performed under the geographic context of Cape Town in an investigative attempt to achieve 24 hour generation. The software used for simulation is the System Advisor Model (SAM) which is an open source software made by the National Renewable Energy Laboratories, USA.