In this paper the results of a techno-economic analysis of improved and optimized molten salt solar tower plants (MSSTP plants) are presented. The potential improvements that were analyzed include different receiver designs, different designs of the HTF-system and plant control, increased molten salt temperatures (up to 640°C) and multi-tower systems. Detailed technological and economic models of the solar field, solar receiver and high temperature fluid system (HTF-system) were developed and used to find potential improvements compared to a reference plant based on Solar Two technology and up-to-date cost estimations. The annual yield model calculates the annual outputs and the LCOE of all variants. An improved external tubular receiver and improved HTF-system achieves a significant decrease of LCOE compared to the reference. This is caused by lower receiver cost as well as improvements of the HTF-system and plant operation strategy, significantly reducing the plant own consumption. A novel star receiver shows potential for further cost decrease. The cavity receiver concepts result in higher LCOE due to their high investment cost, despite achieving higher efficiencies. Increased molten salt temperatures seem possible with an adapted, closed loop HTF-system and achieve comparable results to the original improved system (with 565°C) under the given boundary conditions. In this analysis all multi tower systems show lower economic viability compared to single tower systems, caused by high additional cost for piping connections and higher cost of the receivers.

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The hybridization of Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) and Photovoltaics (PV) systems is a promising approach to reduce costs of solar power plants, while increasing dispatchability and flexibility of power generation. High temperature heat pumps (HT HP) can be utilized to boost the salt temperature in the thermal energy storage (TES) of a Parabolic Trough Collector (PTC) system from 385 °C up to 565 °C. A PV field can supply the power for the HT HP, thus effectively storing the PV power as thermal energy. Besides cost-efficiently storing energy from the PV field, the power block efficiency of the overall system is improved due to the higher steam parameters. This paper presents a technical assessment of Brayton cycle heat pumps to be integrated in hybrid PV-CSP power plants. As a first step, a theoretical analysis was carried out to find the most suitable working fluid. The analysis included the fluids Air, Argon (Ar), Nitrogen (N2) and Carbon dioxide (CO2). N2 has been chosen as the optimal working fluid for the system. After the selection of the ideal working medium, different concepts for the arrangement of a HT HP in a PV-CSP hybrid power plant were developed and simulated in EBSILON®Professional. The concepts were evaluated technically by comparing the number of components required, pressure losses and coefficient of performance (COP).

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