Dynamic Modeling of the Solar Field in Parabolic Trough Solar Power Plants

Barcia, Lourdes A.; Menéndez, Rogelio Peón; Esteban, Juan Martínez; Prieto, Miguel J.; Ramos, Juan; Juez, F. de Cos; Reviriego, Antonio Nevado

doi:10.3390/en81212373

Cited by 31 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 21 publications

(23 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…A quadrocopter, model MD4-1000 (Microdrones GmbH, Siegen, Germany), was used as the UAV to perform the flights above the La Africana PTC CSP plant, located in Córdoba, Spain (CSP plant details in [56]) (Figure 6a). This CSP plant has 104 km of absorber tubes distributed on the surface.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Development of an Open Hardware and Software System Onboard Unmanned Aerial Vehicles to Monitor Concentrated Solar Power Plants

Mesas‐Carrascosa

Santano

Porras

et al. 2017

Sensors

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Concentrated solar power (CSP) plants are increasingly gaining interest as a source of renewable energy. These plants face several technical problems and the inspection of components such as absorber tubes in parabolic trough concentrators (PTC), which are widely deployed, is necessary to guarantee plant efficiency. This article presents a system for real-time industrial inspection of CSP plants using low-cost, open-source components in conjunction with a thermographic sensor and an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). The system, available in open-source hardware and software, is designed to be employed independently of the type of device used for inspection (laptop, smartphone, tablet or smartglasses) and its operating system. Several UAV flight missions were programmed as follows: flight altitudes at 20, 40, 60, 80, 100 and 120 m above ground level; and three cruising speeds: 5, 7 and 10 m/s. These settings were chosen and analyzed in order to optimize inspection time. The results indicate that it is possible to perform inspections by an UAV in real time at CSP plants as a means of detecting anomalous absorber tubes and improving the effectiveness of methodologies currently being utilized. Moreover, aside from thermographic sensors, this contribution can be applied to other sensors and can be used in a broad range of applications where real-time georeferenced data visualization is necessary.

show abstract

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Development of an Open Hardware and Software System Onboard Unmanned Aerial Vehicles to Monitor Concentrated Solar Power Plants

Mesas‐Carrascosa

Santano

Porras

et al. 2017

Sensors

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This software package has also been used in other works [43][44][45], but the equations and methodology described could be easily adapted to any other simulation environment. Figure 4 shows a Simulink block representation of the discharging process.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the Convenience of Using Simulation Models to Optimize the Control Strategy of Molten-Salt Heat Storage Systems in Solar Thermal Power Plants

Prieto

Martínez

Peon³

et al. 2017

Energies

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Thermal oil has been used as heat transfer fluid in many solar thermal power plants, which also use molten salts as thermal energy storage system. Since the engineering of these plants is relatively new, control of the thermal energy storage system is currently achieved in manual or semiautomatic ways, controlling its variables with proportional-integral-derivative (PID) regulators. Once the plant is running, it is very difficult to obtain permission to try new control strategies. Hence, most plants keep running on these simple, sometimes inefficient control algorithms. This paper explores the results obtained with different control strategies implemented on a complete model of energy storage systems based on molten salt. The results provided by the model allow the optimum control strategy to be selected. Comparison of the results obtained by simulation of these control strategies and actual results obtained from a real plant, confirm the accuracy of the selection made.

show abstract

“…The simulation of the HTF system used for the evaluation of the controller presented in this paper has been extensively described in [10]. The model describes the HTF system of the parabolic trough collector solar plant "La Africana" in Córdoba, Spain.…”

Section: Simulationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nonlinear Adaptive Control of Heat Transfer Fluid Temperature in a Parabolic Trough Solar Power Plant

2017

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Control of highly nonlinear processes such as solar collector fields is usually a challenging task. A common approach to this problem involves deploying a set of operation point range-specific controllers, whose actions are to be combined in a switching strategy. Discontinuities in control actions upon switching may lead to instabilities and, therefore, achieving bumpless transitions is always a concern. In addition, linear adaptive predictive controllers need to cope with nonlinearities by using high adaptation speeds, often leading to model vulnerability in the presence of aggressive perturbations. Finally, most of the proposed solutions rely on complex plant model developments. In this work, a multivariable nonlinear model-based adaptive predictive controller has been developed and tested against a parabolic trough solar power plant simulation. Since the model employed by this controller accounts for process nonlinearities, adaptation speed can be dramatically reduced, therefore increasing model robustness. The controller is easily initialized and is able to identify and track the process dynamics, including its nonlinearities as it evolves with time, thus requiring neither process up-front modeling nor switching. The presented controller outperforms its linear counterpart both in terms of accuracy and robustness and, due to the generality of its design, it is expected to be applicable to a wide class of linear and nonlinear processes.

show abstract

Dynamic Modeling of the Solar Field in Parabolic Trough Solar Power Plants

Cited by 31 publications

References 21 publications

The Development of an Open Hardware and Software System Onboard Unmanned Aerial Vehicles to Monitor Concentrated Solar Power Plants

The Development of an Open Hardware and Software System Onboard Unmanned Aerial Vehicles to Monitor Concentrated Solar Power Plants

On the Convenience of Using Simulation Models to Optimize the Control Strategy of Molten-Salt Heat Storage Systems in Solar Thermal Power Plants

Nonlinear Adaptive Control of Heat Transfer Fluid Temperature in a Parabolic Trough Solar Power Plant

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About