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Status: [23rd Feb 2011] first pass

Simulated Concentrating Solar Thermal (CST) Farms

ABSTRACT and INTRODUCTION

In short, we are constructing a hypothetical network of solar thermal electricity generation farms across the continent. This work is a sister analysis to that for simulated wind farms, as we proceed to develop scenarios for 50% renewable electricity.

DATA and METHODS

The solar radiation data (and in-particular here) defines the possible locations of the simulated CST plants. This data (the direct radiation component) is converted into putative electrical output using a CST Power Curve model. Both the data and the power curve model are subject to development (on their respective pages), and as this occurs the results here can be reprocessed to reflect additional data and methodological refinements.

Particular attention needs to be given to the missing data statistics. In future work we may infill some more of these missing values.

The following fragment of Matlab code will load up the initial 2003 data, apply the power curve, and (with some additional tidy-up steps) output the corresponding simulated electrical output. Note that this is simply a transformation of the half-hourly input radiation data into half-hourly output (with later refinement of the time blocks, and possible down-sampling to hour-level data).

load      'OzEA_R1_BoM_Solar_Direct_2003_cleaned.csv';
dat_2003 = OzEA_R1_BoM_Solar_Direct_2003_cleaned;           % just renaming to be clear
simCST_2003 = [];
for i=1:15
  simCST_2003(:,i) = OzEA_simulate_CST_farm_output( dat_2003(:,i+1) );
end
save -ascii 'simCST_2003.txt' simCST_2003

The Matlab script "OzEA_simulate_CST_farm_output.m" calls "OzEA_SolarThermalPowerCurve_R1.m" in order to establish the power curve, and these scripts are detailed here (and can be translated into other languages / forms, taking care to handle missing data).

ANALYSIS and RESULTS

Using the 2003 data, as above, for the 15 sites with BoM radiation data, and applying the CST power curve model, as above, gives the following simulation results at the half hourly level (1.6 MB text file), and daily level (33 KB text file). Note: in the first case the units are W/m² of collector, and so could be converted into MWh if halved, divided by 1000, and then multiplied by the collector size of the hypothetical farm. For our purposes it is only the relative value that matters for now, and so in what follows the traces have been normalised to have mean one.

Plotting this at a daily level:

If you click the image you get a PDF where you can zoom in and pan along for a clearer view. The black line shows the day-level average of all 15 simulated CST farms. Unsurprisingly, we observe a very significant level of spatial smoothing. Note that the y-axis scale has been normalised to give an average value of 1, and we see that at the day-level the overall output only occasionally drops below one half.

REMARKS

To start, just as a reminder, and apart from all the other caveats that go with a first pass look, this is not an engineering proposal. In particular, unless and until we learn otherwise, there is not going to a be a (large) transmission capacity between the east and the west coasts any time soon. In time the analysis here will break down into looking at more realistic configurations of component parts; for now we continue with an overall level view.

As we proceed to scenario realistic configurations there are two particular aspects to consider: first, the need for transmission lines to link generators with loads (to be considered first as being concentrated at state capitals), and second, to consider how the supply (at the hour to hour level) corresponds with demand. This latter analysis will be done, initially at least, in terms of demand remainders.

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fc - February 2011