Estimation of capital costs and techno-economic appraisal of parabolic trough solar collector and solar power tower based CSP plants in India for different condenser cooling options

The choice of condenser cooling option for concentrating solar power (CSP) plants is likely to affect their techno-economic feasibility. In view of this, an attempt has been made to assess relative techno-economics and net life cycle CO2-eq emissions mitigation (LCCM) potential for 50 MW nominal capacity wet-cooled and dry-cooled parabolic trough solar collector (PTSC) and dry-cooled solar power tower (SPT) based CSP plants with 6.0 h of thermal energy storage for two potential locations in India. It was observed that though dry cooling is likely to save significant amount of water (similar to 92%) in PTSC based plants, the same shall result in higher capital cost, higher performance penalty and higher parasitic power requirements leading to around 20% higher levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) as compared to wet-cooled PTSC based plants. It was also observed that the dry-cooled SPT based plants shall be able to deliver up to 4.5% higher annual electricity output and LCOE is also likely to be lowered by 13% than wet-cooled PTSC based plants. Considering emissions embodied and emissions associated with water transport/extraction from the source and water treatment, the estimation of LCCM from the PTSC and SPT based CSP plants have also been undertaken. (C) 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

This study evaluated the techno-economics and CO2 emission reduction potential of wet-cooled and dry-cooled concentrating solar power plants in two potential locations in India. It was found that dry cooling can save a significant amount of water but result in higher capital cost and electricity price, while dry-cooled solar power towers can achieve higher electricity output and lower electricity price.