Design and Simulation of a Solar Chimney PV/T Power Plant in Northwest China

Abstract

A solar chimney PV/T power plant (SCPVTPP) is proposed. Mathematical models are established for the PV/T solar collector, the chimney, and the power conversion unit, respectively. Performances of the designed SCPVTPP are then simulated. The SCPVTPPs with different PV module areas are finally discussed. It is found that the PV cells hold the highest temperature in the solar collector. Temperature rise of the PV module has significant influences to its power generation. Without cooling, the PV power capacity has an average decrease of 28.71%. The contradictory influences of temperature rise and airflow cooling lead to an 11.81% decrease of the average power capacity. By adding the power generated by PVT, the total PV-related power contribution increases by 4.72%. With the increase of the solar collector ratio, the temperature rise and the wind velocity both first decrease then increase, the SCPP power productivity decreases linearly, and the PV power productivity increases linearly, whereas the PVT power productivity first increases linearly then increases superlinearly. There is a reversed solar collector ratio, exceeding which the PV generates most power. In this study, solar thermal power takes the major role when the solar PV area ratio is smaller than 0.055.

Experimental and Theoretical Study of Smart Energy Management Solar Water Heating System for Outdoor Swimming Pool Application in Egypt

“…The energy provided by the solar system for hot water production and heating, as well as the solar percentages associated with it, are calculated by TSOL. (Liu et al 2018). The data for the proposed system components are collected, as well as weather resource data, which is merged and simulated using the TSOL software tool.…”

“…The pay-back time is the amount of time the system needs to run for the investment to pay off in cash. A price-dynamic payment sequence's cash value (CV) over T years (lifetime) is as follows (Liu et al 2018):…”

“…When q is the simple interest factor and r is the price change factor, the price of heating is described as follows (Liu et al 2018):…”

An Ignored Wind Generates More Electricity: A Solar Updraft Tower to a Wind Solar Tower

“…We have applied the similar mechanism in our brimmed-diffuser augmented wind turbines and achieved large output power increase [15][16][17]. Importantly, the new approach enabled the solar updraft tower to utilize two different renewable energies simultaneously, although such a hybrid approach is usually achieved by several devices in the same location [18,19]. We call the tower "a wind solar tower" (WST) which has two mechanisms shown in Figure 1.…”

Investigations on a micro-scale solar chimney

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