Modelling of concentrating solar power plant for power system reliability studies

Growing share of concentrating solar power (CSP) plants in power systems creates the need for including these renewable sources in power system reliability studies. As such studies analyse the grid on a global scale and start to be performed increasingly by Monte Carlo simulations, modelling of CSP production has to be reasonably simplified in order to reduce the calculation time. The model simplification also concerns the minimisation of the required specific knowledge and input data which enables power system engineers to evaluate the impact of CSP without substantial expertise in its underlying physics and by focusing on the key design parameters. There is a large variety of accurate CSP simulation programs and models, and yet neither of them offers the required simplicity. This study addresses this gap by proposing reduced models for predicting energy output of parabolic trough and central receiver systems. The calculation procedure and its underlying assumptions are presented. The adequacy of the models is demonstrated by comparing their predictions with that of the System Advisor Model for different case scenarios.