Ultimate Trough® – A Significant Step towards Cost-competitive CSP

Riffelmann, Klaus-Jürgen; Richert, Timo; Nava, P.; Schweitzer, A.

doi:10.1016/j.egypro.2014.03.194

Cited by 42 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…The Ultimate Trough was collectively developed by FLABEG GmbH (now FLABEG FE); Schlaich Bergermann und Partner, Sonne GmbH (SBP); and the Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics. Support was provided by the German government and the German Aerospace Center (DLR) (K. Riffelmann et al 2014;Weinrebe, Balz, and Schiel 2013). The Ultimate Trough collector that uses synthetic oil as the HTF has been deployed and operating since January 2013 as a demonstration loop.…”

Section: Design Descriptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The Ultimate Trough collector that uses synthetic oil as the HTF has been deployed and operating since January 2013 as a demonstration loop. The collector consists of two SCAs (20 modules) at Harper Lake, California, and has a net aperture area of 3,378m 2 (K. Riffelmann et al 2014). Performance of this loop has been validated by NREL researchers (Zhu and Neises 2015).…”

Section: Design Descriptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Parabolic Trough Collector Cost Update for the System Advisor Model (SAM)

Kurup

Turchi

2015

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This report updates the baseline cost for parabolic trough solar fields in the United States within NREL's System Advisor Model (SAM). SAM, which is available at no cost at https://sam.nrel.gov/, is a performance and financial model designed to facilitate decision making for people involved in the renewable energy industry. SAM is the primary tool used by NREL and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) for estimating the performance and cost of concentrating solar power (CSP) technologies and projects. The research team performed a bottom-up build and cost estimate for two state-of-the-art parabolic trough designs-the SkyTrough and the Ultimate Trough. The assumed solar field area in both cases was about 1.1 million square meters-the equivalent of a large CSP plant. The SkyTrough analysis estimated the potential installed cost for the solar field at $170/m 2. The investigation found that SkyTrough installed costs were sensitive to factors such as aluminum alloy cost and production volume. For example, in the case of the SkyTrough the installed cost would rise to nearly $210/m 2 if the aluminum alloy cost was $1.70/lb instead of $1.03/lb. Accordingly, one must be aware of fluctuations in the relevant commodities markets to track system cost over time. SkyTrough uses a reflective polymer film sold under the name ReflecTech PLUS. The estimated installed cost for the Ultimate Trough was only slightly higher at $178/m 2 , which includes an assembly facility of $11.6 million amortized over the required production volume. Considering the size and overall cost of the Ultimate Trough solar field, two parallel production lines in a fully covered assembly facility-each with the specific torque box, module, and mirror jigs-would be justified for a full CSP plant. For comparison, the developer estimated that for a solar field of roughly 40% of the NREL-assumed size using synthetic oil for the HTF the module assembly line was on the order of €5M (~$6.7M). The steel-framed Ultimate Trough solar field cost was more sensitive to steel prices than the SkyTrough. Ultimate Trough uses back-surface glass mirrors. Spaceframe 29 Extruded Al tubes and extruded connectors. Riveted fastening Receivers 24 80-mm OD receiver tubes Receiver Supports 5 Galvanized steel structures Receivers 1 70-mm OD receiver tubes with advanced materials are needed to utilize the hightemperature molten salt Receiver Supports 8 Galvanized steel structures

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Section: Design Descriptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Design Descriptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Parabolic Trough Collector Cost Update for the System Advisor Model (SAM)

Kurup

Turchi

2015

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“…[10]- [12] with collector specifications from Ref. [11], [13] and receiver specifications from Ref. [14].…”

Section: Modelling and Design Of The Parabolic Trough Power Plantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Identification of optimum molten salts for use as heat transfer fluids in parabolic trough CSP plants. A techno-economic comparative optimization

Pan¹,

Ferruzza²,

Guédez³

et al. 2018

AIP Conference Proceedings

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Parabolic trough power plants using thermal oil as heat transfer fluid are the most mature concentrating solar power technology and state of the art. To further increase their efficiency and lower costs, molten salts can be used as heat transfer fluid. This results in higher operating temperature differences for improved cycle efficiencies and enables direct thermal energy storage at lower costs due to omission of the oil-to-salt heat exchanger and the need for smaller storage sizes. As a variety of salts are available to choose from, this study uses a multi-objective optimization to identify the most suitable heat transfer fluid for three locations in South Africa, Spain and Chile. The lowest values for the levelized costs of electricity (LCOE) can be found in Chile using Solar Salt as heat transfer fluid (75.0 $/MWhe). Generally, Solar Salt offers the lowest LCOE values followed by thermal oil and Hitec. The results also suggest that the choice of the heat transfer fluid is dependent on the direct normal irradiance (DNI) at each location. Thermal oil is competitive with Solar Salt in small systems at locations with low DNI values, whereas Hitec can be cheaper than thermal oil in large systems at locations with high DNI. Furthermore, it is also investigated at which freeze alert temperature set point the activation of the freeze protection system is optimal. The results indicate that this temperature should be chosen close to the solar field inlet temperature for small systems, while it can be lowered significantly for large systems to reduce electricity consumption from the freeze protection system.

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“…the first parabolic trough solar power plants in Europe Andasol 1-3 (Solar Millennium, 2008). Current developments aim to reduce costs by economies of scale, increasing the aperture to 19 m by 6.77 m in case of the HelioTroughs (Riffelmann et al, 2009;Kö ttler et al, 2012) or to 24 m by 7.50 m in case of Ultimate Troughs (Riffelmann et al, 2013;Schweitzer et al, 2014) per module. An overview of http://dx.doi.org/10.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%