Simplified Modeling and Simulation of Electricity Production from a Dish/Stirling System

Abstract

This work is part of the dynamic of proposing a solution to the problem of access to electricity in Chad, which has a rate of access to electricity of 3%. N’Djamena has significant solar potential that can be harnessed to generate electricity. In this paper, we present a theoretical study of the performances of the Dish/Stirling system with the purpose of producing electricity, based on a mathematical model taking into account each of the subparts of the system (concentrator, solar cavity receiver, and Stirling engine). Hydrogen is preferred to helium as the working fluid for operating the Stirling engine at high temperatures. This coupled model made it possible to estimate the monthly average of the electric power produced by this modular system and also its overall solar electricity yield.

Energy Generation Intensity (EGI) for Parabolic Dish/Engine Concentrated Solar Power in Muscat, Sultanate of Oman

“…A Stirling engine (which operates in a closed thermodynamic cycle), can convert 32% of solar radiation into electricity, whereas solar towers and parabolic troughs may have about half of this overall conversion efficiency [11]. It should be noted that mathematical modelling in a study revealed that the theoretical overall (solar-to-electric) efficiency of the Stirling engine (as a power generation unit combined with a parabolic dish) increases with the temperature of the working fluid at the engine inlet, nearly following a linear relationship with the fluid temperature [12]. Concentrated solar power dish systems use a parabolic mirror (the dish) to focus incoming solar radiation onto a localized heat engine that drives an electric generator to generate electricity, and both are attached to the dish.…”

Modeling and Simulation of Hourly Irradiance for Solar Applications in Chad: Case of the City of Abeche

“…Thus, the need for energy is becoming more and more important. Chad is one of the Sahelian countries that, thanks to its geographical position, has a very high renewable energy potential, particularly wind and solar energy, which unfortunately are not used to cover the population's energy needs [1][2][3][4][5][6]. The city of Abeche covers an area of 3,000 hectares and is located in the Sahelian climatic zone in eastern Chad (Figure 1), with geographical coordinates of 13°85 North and 20°85 East and an altitude of 545 meters.…”

“…In spite of this, its electricity coverage rate is very low and it has a very difficult water supply in its localities. The increasing demand for solar energy is focusing all attention on solar solutions [8]. Thanks to the considerable advances in scientific research in the field of solar energy [9], innovative results are offered to the solar industries in order to propose more effective and efficient solutions in all their production branches [10].…”

“…In general, in the case of daily and monthly solar radiation estimates, empirical models that on the one hand use sunshine duration measurements and on the other hand do not use sunshine duration measurements [19], techniques based on the use of artificial neural network [20], long-term daily global radiation estimation models [21] and many other techniques [22][23][24] are useful. In the case of hourly estimation of solar radiation, radiation prediction models [25] and estimation models often called semi-empirical models [4,26,27], are the models used in previous works in the literature. Studies have been carried out to evaluate the solar potential in the city of Abeche with the aim of developing solar energy as a source of energy that is not only abundant and free but also environmentally friendly.…”

“…This choice is motivated by the reasons provided above and the limitations of the models proposed to evaluate the solar radiation in this city. In addition, in the literature these models are much more appreciated for their estimation qualities on different planes of capture and their ease of use when only the data of the geographical coordinates of the locality are known with certainty and available [4,29,30]. In a first step, both models will be used to evaluate the global irradiance on a horizontal plane and the values of their estimates will be compared to the data from the SoDa-HelioClim-3 database used as reference data (or measured data) in this work.…”