Techno-economic analysis of a solar thermal retrofit for an air-cooled geothermal Organic Rankine Cycle power plant

Florian Heberle, Markus Hofer, Nicolas Ürlings, Hartwig Schröder, Thomas Anderlohr and Dieter Brüggemann

Renewable Energy, 2017, vol. 113, issue C, 494-502

Abstract: High ambient temperatures are often coupled with high levels of solar irradiation and lead to a significant reduction of the power output of air-cooled geothermal Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) power plants. Consequently, hybridisation based on solar thermal power is promising. In this work, a solar thermal retrofit based on superheating of the ORC working fluid is analysed under technical and economic criteria considering typical conditions in Turkey. The conducted off-design simulations prove that the isentropic efficiency of the turbine has a major impact on the performance of the entire system. The solar field size and the corresponding degree of superheating is limited in the respect to the built-in components. Therefore, the thermal stability of the examined ORC working fluid is sufficient and a low-temperature parabolic trough field with water as heat transfer fluid can be realized. For the retrofit, detailed simulations over the period of one year show up to 7.8% more electricity, a solar-to-electric efficiency of 10% and a significant power gain during summer. Besides, an increased reinjection temperature could lead to an improved management of the geothermal reservoir. Economically, the medium sized solar field is related to the lowest levelised costs of electricity (LCOE) with 145 $/MWh.

Keywords: Organic Rankine Cycle; Retrofit; Geothermal energy; Solar energy; Parabolic trough collectors (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148117305359
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:renene:v:113:y:2017:i:c:p:494-502

DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2017.06.031

Access Statistics for this article

Renewable Energy is currently edited by Soteris A. Kalogirou and Paul Christodoulides

More articles in Renewable Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().