LCOE reduction potential of parabolic trough and solar tower technology in G20 countries until 2030

Manufacturing cost analysis of advanced parabolic trough collector

“…The NREL Ultimate Trough reference is approximately 800,000 m 2 compared to 170,000 m 2 (Duba Green Power Plant), as such discussions with sbp indicate that the Duba solar field due to wind loads, corrosion prevention requirements, and its smaller scale than this study's, may not reach the estimated cost of $152/m 2 . Work from DLR where the Ultimate Trough is used as today's reference system, found that the solar field cost in $2018 could be approximately $127/m 2 in Morocco, albeit for a larger solar field [19]. This solar field like the NREL analysis includes: the collector structure, the pylons and foundations, the mirrors, the receivers, drives and electricals, but not the site preparation, HTF in the solar field and the HTF system.…”

“…This solar field like the NREL analysis includes: the collector structure, the pylons and foundations, the mirrors, the receivers, drives and electricals, but not the site preparation, HTF in the solar field and the HTF system. With a 100 Price Index for Morocco and a Price Index of 114 for the U.S. [19], the U.S installed cost for the Ultimate Trough could be roughly $145/m 2 . Improvements to the Ultimate Trough (e.g.…”

“…Improvements to the Ultimate Trough (e.g. molten salt and 10m aperture) are not incorporated here and could reduce cost further [19].…”

Cost Update: Commercial and Advanced Heliostat Collectors

“…A molten salt power tower plant is composed of the following subsystems: heliostat field, power tower and receiver, associated HTF and TES system, power block, fossil-fired backup (optional), and necessary ancillary facilities; see Figure 2. It shows a simplified molten salt power tower plant, without fossil fuel back-up and a two-tank TES-consisting of cold (290°C) and hot (565°C) tanks-that operates with a molten salt HTF (Dersch et al, 2019). The heat collected in the receiver is directly transferred to the two-tank TES, and an indirect heat exchanger is not needed unlike most parabolic trough plants, which use molten salt for the TES (IRENA, 2016).…”

“…This report is available at no cost from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) at www.nrel.gov/publications. Current molten salt is a binary blend of potassium and sodium nitrate, 40% and 60% by weight respectively (Dersch et al, 2019;SQM, 2018). DLR expects solar salts, with slightly higher operating temperatures of 600°C by 2030 and that these will lead to power block efficiency gains of 43.5%-44.1%, as shown in Figure 2 (Dersch et al, 2019).…”