Model for CSP plants simulation: Application to the 1MW CSP ORC plant in Benguerir

Simulating concentrated solar plants is a topic of high importance that was implemented years ago. Several simulation software were set in place to help assess the feasibility of CSP projects and their economic viability, the most known of them are System Advisor Model (SAM) developed by the American National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and GREENIUS developed by the German Aerospace Center (DLR). These two software offer a very good view of main performance and economic indicators for CSP plants. It is especially true for "classical" plants with Steam Rankine Cycles and Wet Cooled cycles although other technologies such as tower systems, Air Cooled systems or even PV plants are also taken into account. However, non-conventional CSP elements like Organic Rankine Cycles are generally not considered, two main reasons are behind this: few CSP plants do use an Organic Rankine Cycle and the number of fluids that can be used is very wide [1] and implies a separate model for each fluid. In addition, not all solar collectors are available, hence collectors with performances similar to desired system are generally use instead. For those reasons, a model for simulation a CSP-ORC plant was developed in order to foresee the potential performance and economics of the plants and its feasibility, in this paper we present a short overview of the model, of the CSP-ORC plant and a comparative simulation between two cases and using GREENUS as reference.