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Abstract:The present work investigates the matching of an advanced small scale Combined Heat and Power (CHP) Rankine cycle plant with end-user thermal and electric load. The power plant consists of a concentrated solar power field co-powered by a biomass furnace to produce steam in a Rankine cycle, with a CHP configuration. A hotel was selected as the end user due to its high thermal to electric consumption ratio. The power plant design and its operation were modelled and investigated by adopting transient simulations with an hourly distribution. The study of the load matching of the proposed renewable power technology and the final user has been carried out by comparing two different load tracking scenarios, i.e., the thermal and the electric demands. As a result, the power output follows fairly well the given load curves, supplying, on a selected winter day, about 50 GJ/d of thermal energy and the 6 GJ/d of electric energy, with reduced energy dumps when matching the load. Keywords

Power supply in stand-alone power systems, such those in non-grid connected islands, represents an important area of study in investigating smart energy concepts. In particular, the discontinuity in renewable energy availability and the mismatch with power demand are likely to hinder grid stability and overall system efficiency. Typically, the load-levelling relies on diesel engine gen-sets which suffer the modulation of power output resulting in increased operation costs and life time reduction. Although energy storage can complement power fluxes balance, a proper dispatch strategy is needed in order to improve diesel engine operations in Renewable Energy Source (RES) integrated systems. The present study investigates the merit of a dispatch strategy aiming at improving gen-set performance in a hybrid RES/storage/Diesel Engine Generator set (DEGS) power configuration. The proposed dispatch strategy is modelled in a transient simulation software, with hourly based analysis over a year period and is applied to a small island case study.