City Research Online

Abstract

The concept of combining small micro gas turbines with solar dish concentrator is being developed by the EU funded project OMSoP [1] to benefit from the advantages of higher efficiency, power density and reliability. This paper focuses on small units which are only powered by the solar irradiation and aims to identify suitable means of control that would minimize power output variations and achieve maximum annual generated electricity. Three different strategies have been proposed and studied in this work: power regulation control which is based on variation of the load to achieve maximum permissible power for any particular value of insolation, recuperation control which is a novel idea to partially by-pass the recuperator and use it as an additional degree of freedom in the control scheme and a hybrid control strategy which combines the first two methods. The evaluation criteria of these strategies are based on the annual generated electricity, rated generated power, solar-to-electrical efficiency and practical considerations. The performance of a 5kWe system has been calculated and compared when each of the above control strategies are applied. Quantitative and qualitative comparisons show that the recuperation control and combined methods can provide constant power output for a wide range of solar irradiation, but at the expense of reduced overall performance and additional cost and complexity. The power regulation strategy provides maximum generated electricity, but it is not suitable when the generated power by the system requires to follow the variations of the load from the consumer side.

Publication Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Additional Information:	Copyright © 2017 by ASME. Materials cannot be used without proper authorization.
Publisher Keywords:	Concentrating solar power, Micro gas turbines, Solar energy, Irradiation (Radiation exposure), Stress, Degrees of freedom, Hybrid control, Power density, Reliability
Subjects:	T Technology > TD Environmental technology. Sanitary engineering T Technology > TK Electrical engineering. Electronics Nuclear engineering
Departments:	School of Science & Technology > Engineering

Export

Downloads