Applied Thermal Engineering 59 (2013) 627e633

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Applied Thermal Engineering

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/apthermeng

Optimal year-round operation of a concentrated solar energy plant in

the south of Europe
Lidia Martn, Mariano Martn*
Departamento de Ingeniera Qumica, Universidad de Salamanca, Pza. Cados 1-5, 37008 Salamanca, Spain

h i g h l i g h t s

Plant design so far relies on process simulation and only partial optimization studies.

We optimize the operation of a concentrated solar power plant.

The facility involves solar eld, molten salts, steam and electricity generation and cooling.

The results are promising and validate literature sensitive studies.

a r t i c l e i n f o

a b s t r a c t

Article history:
Received 13 March 2013
Accepted 2 June 2013
Available online 27 June 2013

We present the year-round optimization of the operation of a concentrated solar power facility evaluating the molten salts storage, the power block and cooling. We locate the plant in the south of Europe,
Almera (Spain), where high solar radiation is available. The operation of the plant is a function of the
solar incidence as well as the climate and atmospheric conditions. The optimization of the system is
formulated as a multiperiod Non-linear Programming problem (NLP) that is solved for the optimal
production of electricity over a year dening the main operating variables of the thermal and cooling
cycles. For a maximum of 25 MW in summer and a minimum of 9.5 MW in winter the annual production
cost of electricity is 0.15 V/kWh consuming an average of 2.1 Lwater/kWh. The investment for the plant is
260 MV. Scale-up studies reveal that the production cost can decrease by half while the investment per
unit of power should become competitive with current coal based power plants if solar and coal facilities
present similar production capacities.
2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords:
Energy
Concentrated solar power
Rankine cycle
Mathematical optimization

1. Introduction
Energy consumption has increased over the last decades. So far,
the use of fossil fuels has been convenient due to their availability
and easy transformation. However, the depletion of the reservoirs
and the increased need for energy demand a change in the current
energy supply system [1]. Renewable sources are a valuable alternative. In Fig. 1 we can see the expected increase in the contribution
of solar, wind and biomass. Solar energy is an option in regions with
high solar irradiation [2]. There are already a number of demonstration plants worldwide [3] whose characteristics in terms of
power and technology can be found in the literature [4] including
the investment and electricity production cost [5].
In Fig. 2 we present the solar radiation over the Mediterranean
Sea region. It can be seen that the solar energy received is only a few

* Corresponding author. Tel.: 34 923 294479.

E-mail address: mariano.m3@usal.es (M. Martn).
1359-4311/$ e see front matter 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2013.06.031

kWh/m2/day. To achieve higher intensities and high operating

temperatures Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) technologies can be
used. They are based on the concentration of sun radiation to heat
up an energy transfer uid used for steam and electricity production. CSP plants consist of three parts: solar eld, steam turbine and
cooling unit. Rankine cycles are typically used since they provide
efciency advantages [8]. Moreover, for the continuous operation of
these plants during the night and in overcast days, thermal energy
from the heat tank or an additional source of energy is typically
used [3].
So far only a few studies have dealt with the optimization of the
performance of the plant. These studies vary from focusing on the
thermal cycle and using different approaches such as sensitivity
analysis for the extraction pressure [9] or the exhaust pressure from
the turbine [10], evolutionary algorithms [11] or neural networks
[12], to mathematical optimization approaches to use solar energy
for water desalinization. These last cases consider a Rankine cycle
with xed operating conditions and one expansion alone in the
turbine [13], including multiobjective optimization [14]. However,

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L. Martn, M. Martn / Applied Thermal Engineering 59 (2013) 627e633

investment per unit of power generated. Finally, in Section 5 we

draw some conclusions.

2. Modeling
2.1. Modeling assumptions

Fig. 1. Energy consumption per source of energy [6].

to the best of our knowledge no one has optimized of the operating

conditions of the Rankine cycle nor evaluated the cooling tower
operation for the year-round operation of the plant.
In this paper we use mathematical programming techniques for
the conceptual optimal design and operation of a concentrated
solar power plant over a year based on molten salt technology. We
consider the variability in the sun reception, in the freshwater
temperature and in the atmospheric conditions. The facility is
located in Almera (Spain), a region with one of the highest solar
radiations in Europe, see Fig. 2. The paper is organized as follows.
Section 2 describes the modeling features and the operating conditions of the selected location. In Section 3 we present the optimization procedure. Next, in Section 4 the main results are
discussed such as the major operating conditions, the monthly
water consumption of the facility, an economic evaluation and a
study on the effect of the plant scale on the production cost and

The plant consists of three parts, the heliostat eld including the
collector and the molten salts storage tanks, the steam turbine and
the cooling tower [3]. Fig. 3 presents the owsheet for the process
where the heliostat eld has not been included. Our process is based
on the use of a tower to collect the solar energy and a regenerative
Rankine cycle, see Fig. 4. The steam is generated in a system of three
heat exchangers where it is rst heated up to saturation and then
evaporated using the total ow of molten salts. However, only a
fraction of the ow of salts is used to superheat the steam before it is
fed to the rst body of the turbine. The rest is used to reheat up the
steam before it is fed to the second body. In the second body of the
turbine, part of the steam is extracted at a medium pressure and it is
used to heat up the condensate. The rest of the steam is nally
expanded to an exhaust pressure, condensed and recycled. A cooling
tower is used to condensate this exhaust steam. Each unit is modeled
using mass and energy balances as well as thermodynamic properties. The main assumptions can be seen in Table 1.

2.2. Opeating conditions

In Table 2 we present the monthly operating conditions of the
plant including the radiation received in Almera, the sun hours, the
ambient temperature of the air and water and the air average humidity [15]. We consider as water temperature that of the Mediterranean Sea in that region [16]. It is important to notice that the
same formulation can be used for any other region by using the

Fig. 2. Radiation in Europe (kWh m2 day1) [7].

L. Martn, M. Martn / Applied Thermal Engineering 59 (2013) 627e633

629

Fig. 3. Flowsheet for the concentrated solar power plant.

appropriate data and also to compare the performance of a facility

under different ambient conditions.
3. Optimization procedure
The model is formulated as a multiperiod NLP problem written
in GAMS [17]. We maximize the energy produced, z, given by Eq.
(1), over the 12 time periods:

WTurbine1;tp WTurbine2;tp WTurbine3;tp

(1)

tp

Subject to the model for the process described in Section 2.

The main decision variables are the operating inlet and
discharge pressures at the three bodies of the turbine, the split

fraction for the molten salts to be used at HX1 and at HX4, the
fraction of steam extracted from the second body of the turbine and
the air ow rate and its temperature prole at the cooling tower.
The problem consists of 3200 equations and 3500 variables. The
complexities due to the integration of the design of the cooling
tower together with the Rankine cycle result in the need for proper
initialization by using several starting points based on data from
the literature and bounds for the variables such as owrates,
temperatures and the operating characteristics of the cooling
tower, the minimum air ow and (hL/ky). CONOPT 3.0 [18] is used
to solve the problem. This formulation can also be used to evaluate
daily or weekly operation of the plant by changing the time periods
from a monthly basis to an hourly or daily basis monitoring the
atmospheric conditions which can be useful for the integration of
the solar energy into the grid.
4. Results
We divide this section in four parts presenting the optimal
operating conditions, the water consumption, an economic evaluation and a scale-up study.
4.1. Operation

Fig. 4. Rankine regenerative cycle.

The ow rate from the salts storage tank is split so that 30% of
the ow is used in HX1 to heat up the saturated steam while the
rest is sent to HX4 for the reheating stage. For all the periods it turns
out that the superheated steam enters the rst body of the turbine
at 125 bar and 555  C exiting it at 11 bar. This stream is reheated up
in HX4 to 500  C and fed to the second body of the turbine from
where it exits at 6.5 bar. 15% of the stream that leaves the second
body of the turbine is extracted and sent to HX6 while the rest is
expanded in the third body of the turbine to an exhaust pressure of
0.19 bar. This stream is condensed in HX5 and the energy is
removed by the cooling tower.
In Table 3 we compare the results obtained for the Rankine
cycle with those reported by different authors. The optimal inlet

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L. Martn, M. Martn / Applied Thermal Engineering 59 (2013) 627e633

Table 1
Main modeling assumptions.

Table 3
Comparison of the main operating parameters of the Rankine cycle for solar plants.

Equipment

Main assumptions

Heliostates

Design power for multiperiod

P 25 MW [3]
Afield
Qcollector
3600$hs $td

P$t
Radannual

Es Radi $td $Afield $hfield

Afield nh $Ah $hh

Cosine losses (20%), shading and blocking
(2% losses), heliostat reectivity
(t from 0.90 to 0.95) and transmission
losses through the atmosphere (5% loses)
Field efciency (held) of 55%.
Heliostat efciency (hh) of 90%.
Radannual 520 kWh=m2
The energy captured by a xed heliostat
eld at a time is transferred to the salts.
Tank 2
290  C [3]
Tank 1
565  C [3]
Molten salts
Composition: 60%w/w NaNO3e40% w/w KNO3 [3]
sun
$fCollector;tank1 ;
Feed from tank 1 to splitter ftank1;splitter  h24
Turbine
Isentropic efciency 0.9 [20]
Feed pressure range 90e125 bar
First body exhaust range 11e35 bar
Second body extraction range 5e10 bar
Exhaust pressure from 0.05 bar to 0.31 bar
Expansions should result in a vapor phase
Heat exchangers Cooling water temperature used in HX5 increases a
maximum of 10  C and the maximum cooling water
temperature should be 35  C
Stream output of HX6 should be liquid
Cooling tower
Modeled using Mickley method [22]
Water losses by evaporation (kg/s) lower than: 1.8$0.00085$
f(cooling,HX5)(T(cooling,HX5)T(HX5,cooling)) [22]
(hL/ky) >10
Exiting air cannot have a humidity higher than 95%
Operating hours 6450 h
Nomenclature
Aeld: Heliostat eld area (m2)
Ah: Heliostat area (120 m2)
f(unit 1,unit 2): mass ow from unit 1 to unit 2 (kg/s)
hsun: Sun hours (h)
P: Power (kW)
Q(collector): Power captured by collector (kW)
Es: Solar energy (J)
Radannual Annual radiation (kW/m2)
td: time in days in a month (days)
top: Operating time (s)
T(unit 1,unit 2): Temperature of the stream from unit 1 to
unit 2 ( C)

pressure to the rst body of the turbine turns out to be 125 bar,
which is similar to Xus et al. cases 1 and 2 [19], lower than Xus
case 3 [19] and higher than other papers such as Nezammahalleh
et al. [20], Morin et al. [11] or Halb et al. [10] who reported 90,
Table 2
Plant operating conditions.
Month

kWh/m2$day

Day

SUN
(H)

Sun
(h/day)

TAmb
( C)

% Humidity

Twater
( C)

Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
June
July
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
Average

4.377
5.125
5.319
6.387
6.697
8.587
8.668
7.342
6.057
4.126
3.513
3.326
5.794

31
28
31
30
31
30
31
31
30
31
30
31
30.4

191
191
228
250
299
322
338
312
257
221
187
176
248

6.161
6.821
7.355
8.333
9.645
10.733
10.903
10.065
8.567
7.129
6.233
5.677
8.13

12.5
13.2
14.7
16.4
19.1
22.7
25.7
26.4
24.0
20.0
16.2
13.7
18.7

69
68
66
64
66
64
63
65
66
68
70
70
66.6

15.5
15.0
16.0
17.5
19.5
25.0
26.0
27.0
26.0
24.0
21.0
17.0
20.8

Palenzuela
et al. 1) [9]
Palenzuela
et al. 2) [9]
Palenzuela
et al. 3) [9]
Palenzuela
et al. 4) [9]
Ghobeity
et al. [13]
Morin et al.
[11]
Salcedo et al.
[14]
Halb et al. [10]
Xu et al. 1) [19]
Xu et al. 2) [19]
Xu et al. 3) [19]
Nezammahalleh
[20]
This work

T
(HP) ( C)

P(HP)
(bar)

P(MP)
(bar)

P(Ext)
(bar)

P(exha)
(bar)

371

104

17

0.18

371

104

17

0.31

371

104

17

0.18

371

104

17

(2/4/6/10/16)

0.18

540

40

0.05

392.9

98.7

10.6

0.08

40

373
552
552
552
500

100
126
126
240
90

18
e
e
48
18

e
31
31
30
7/2.1/0.5

0.06e0.2
0.1
0.1
0.1
0.07

555

125

11

6.5

0.19

98.7 and 100 bar respectively, see Table 3. The optimal discharge
of the rst body of the turbine occurs at 11 bar, a lower pressure
compared to most of the cases but for the results reported by
Morin et al. [11]. In terms of the extractions, Palenzuelas et al.
scenario 4 [9] reported a sensitivity analysis for the effect of the
extraction pressure from the low pressure turbine on the plant
efciency. They consider different extraction pressures, 2, 4, 6, 10
and 16 bar, resulting in the fact that the efciency of the plant
decreases with the extraction pressure. Xus et al. [19] considered
one extraction at 30 bar while Nezammahalleh et al. [20]
considered three extractions at 7, 2.1 and 0.5 bar respectively. In
our case, with one extraction, we obtain 6.5 bar as the optimum
value. This result can be considered as a trade-off in the loss of
efciency presented by Palenzuela et al. [9] as the pressure of the
extraction increases. Finally, the exhaust pressure we obtained,
0.19 bar as saturated steam, is similar to Palenzuelas work cases 1,
3 & 4 [9], 0.18 bar, higher than the values presented by Nezammahalleh et al. [20], Xus et al. [19] or Ghobeity et al. [13], and
lower than Salcedo et al. [14] or Palenzuelas case 2 [9] see
Table 3. Halb et al. [10] presented a sensitivity study evaluating
the effect of the exhaust pressure on plant efciency considering a
range of values from 0.06 to 0.2 bar. They found a decrease in
power efciency with the exhaust pressure pointing out that a
value of 0.073 bar is the most convenient. The value corresponds
also to Andasol solar power plant, that uses trough technology,
instead of the Tower based design we considered based on
GEMASOLAR plant. Furthermore, we x the exhaust to be saturated vapor to avoid mechanical problems in the turbine.
Fig. 5 shows the year-round production of electricity. During
summer we obtain a maximum of 25 MW for two consecutive
months, June and July, while the lowest production capacities are
found in November and December, just below 10 MW. For the
extreme atmospheric operating conditions, July and December, in
Fig. 6a and b respectively we present the cooling tower operation.
The green line (In web version) shows the air temperature prole
along the column. Air is heated up along the column in December
while in July, the hotter air results in a small decrease in the temperature in the rst stages within the cooling tower. The average
power generated during the year is 18 MW by distributing the
hours of operation of the plant, 6450 h, proportionally to the power
produced each month.

L. Martn, M. Martn / Applied Thermal Engineering 59 (2013) 627e633

Fig. 5. Energy production through the year.

In spite of the use of local solvers, due to the size of the problem,
the consistency in the results for the different time periods and
with the different starting points suggest that good results are
obtained, although no global solution can be claimed.

4.2. Water consumption

In Fig. 7 we present the water make-up needed for the plant
over the year operation due to evaporative losses (Ev), computed
from the mass balances to the plant, and blowdown (B), calculated
as Eq. (2) assuming that the number of cycles of concentration
(COC) is 5 [21]. The drift is negligible compared to these two values
and thus it is not considered [22]

Ev
COC  1

(2)

The reason for not presenting the same pattern as the energy
production is that the upper limit for the temperature of the cooling
water is xed to 35  C. Thus the difference in the inlet and outlet
water temperatures at HX5 is variable. Water consumption depends on the water and air temperatures and the air humidity. We
can see that during the hottest months, the consumption is higher.
The average consumption is 2.1 L/kWh, which is an interesting
value since it is similar to US average for thermoelectric plants,
1.8 L/kWh [23]. Moreover, according to the literature, CSP plants
present a consumption of water in the range of 2.7e3.8 L/kWh.
Although these plants do not provide an advantage in terms of
water consumption compared to thermoelectric ones, they still
present a competitive value.

631

Where access to water is even more restricted, two options

arise: the use of part of the energy for the production of freshwater
out of sea water or the implementation of dry cooling technologies.
Evaluating the trade-off between dry and wet technologies is not
the scope of this paper. However, it is important to point out that,
according to the literature, the water consumption using dry
technologies ranges between 0.1 and 0.3 L/kWh but there is a cost
in terms of energy consumption. From 1% to 5% of the production of
energy is consumed by the air fans [24]. Simulation results for
plants using both technologies can be found in the literature.
Palenzuela et al. [25] reported that wet cooling is more efcient.
Furthermore, the power consumed by the fans in the case of dry
cooling is from 1.5 to 5 times the one for wet cooling [26]. Finally
the difference in the fan power consumption along the year is
signicant. When dry cooling is used, the consumption during
summer is up to 2.5 times that of winter, while wet cooling consumes similar power along the year and always lower than dry
cooling [10].
4.3. Economic evaluation
The investment includes equipment cost and installation, piping
and instrumentation, land, chemicals and administration. The
factorial method [27] relies on the equipment cost, updated from
Ref. [28]. We consider the units described in the owsheet given by
Fig. 3 and the heliostats. The design point for equipment sizing
corresponds to a radiation of 900 W/m2 and we assume the atmospheric conditions of July. We obtain 2870 heliostats and a
maximum power at the turbine of 62 MW. For the values obtained
in this scenario we price the equipment. The total cost for the
equipment accounts for 72 MV2012. Fig. 8 presents the share of the
different sections to the equipment cost. More than 50% of the
equipment cost is due to the solar eld and the collector while the
turbine and the heat transfer system contribute with around 20%
each. Finally the cooling tower burdens the equipment cost with
less than 4% of the total amount.
For the evaluation of the investment cost [27], the installed
equipment represents 1.5 times the equipment cost. Piping, isolation, instrumentation and utilities represent 20%, 15%, 20% and 10%
of the equipment cost respectively. Land and buildings cost is
estimated to be 8 MV, and we pay for the salts (0.665 V/kg). These
items add up to the x cost (191 MV). Current research is developing different heat storages [29]. The fees represent 3% of the x
cost, other administrative expenses and overheads and the plant
layout represent 10% of the direct costs (fees plus x capital) and 5%
of the x cost respectively. The plant start up cost represents 15% of

Fig. 6. Cooling tower operation at top and bottom production capacities (a) July (b) December.

632

L. Martn, M. Martn / Applied Thermal Engineering 59 (2013) 627e633

Fig. 7. Water consumption.

the investment. The investment adds up to 260 MV, similar to that

reported for GEMASOLAR plant, located in Seville, cost 230 MV for
20 MW gross [3].
Furthermore, we estimate the production cost of the electricity
[27]. For the average annual cost, we consider the labour costs (0.5%
of investment), equipment maintenance (2.5% of x costs), amortization (linear with time in 20 years), taxes (1% investment),
overheads (1% investment) and administration (5% of labour,
equipment maintenance, amortization, taxes and overheads). The
total production costs adds up to 17 MV/year for an annual production of 117 GWh. Fig. 9 presents the breakdown of the production cost. The average production cost results 0.15 V/kWh. Halb
et al. [10] reported a price, for wet cooling, of 0.15 V/kWh while the
values reported in the literature are in the range from $0.13 to $0.17/
kWh [30] depending on the technology and location [31]. The
levelized cost of electricity, i 0.05 [32] results in 0.30 V/kWh, in
the upper bound of the range of the ones reported for different
concentrated solar plants [33].

4.4. Scale-up studies

Most thermal power plants are large facilities (500e1000 MW)
while most solar demonstration plants have a production capacity

Fig. 9. Electricity production cost breakdown.

bellow 50 MW [5] so that direct comparisons are not appropriate.

Based on the validated case above, we evaluate the effect of the
scale of the plant on the electricity production cost and investment.
We scale up the equipment cost using the data by the company
MATCHE [28], considering that for equipment bigger than the
larger standard, a number of equipment are used in parallel.
However, the land required is proportional to the number of heliostats and so is its cost. The cost of the heliostats and that of the
receptor tower are scaled up using the common 0.6 factor for the
chemical industry. In Fig. 10 we present the effect of the scale on the
production cost. We can see that the production cost decrease to
0.07 V/kWh, which becomes competitive with electricity from gas
or coal [34]. We can easily correlate the data obtaining Eq. (3)

CostV=kWh 1:61$PowerkW0:25

(3)

In terms of the levelized cost, the scale of the plant should

decrease it by half (0.16 V/kWh) when the plant sizes reaches
300 MW. In terms of investment, the plant scales with a power of
0.78 and the data can be tted to Eq. (4). This reduction also makes
the use of solar energy competitive although still slightly more
expensive per kW installed than fossil fuel energy sources [35]. i.e.
for a solar power plant of 400 MW the investment decreases until
7000 V/kW (1100 V/kWh for 6450 h of operation).

InvestmentMV 0:124$powerkW0:78

(4)

Finally, we have to bear in mind that the development in the

technology is expected to reduce the prices in the medium and long

Fig. 8. Distribution of the equipment cost per sections.

Fig. 10. Effect of the scale of the plant on the electricity production cost.

L. Martn, M. Martn / Applied Thermal Engineering 59 (2013) 627e633

term while other more mature technologies are already reaching

their minimum [36].

[11]

5. Conclusions
The operation of a concentrated solar plant using a regenerative
Rankine cycle has been optimized along a natural year using
mathematical programming techniques.
The average production of energy is 18 MW but it ranges from
9.5 MW during winter to 25 MW during summer as a result of the
solar radiation received. The average consumption of water is 2.1 L/
kWh, which is competitive with thermoelectric plants. The investment of the plant is 260 MV and the production cost 0.15
V/kWh, a little high compared to fossil fuel-based electricity.
However, economies of scale are expected to reduce the production
cost and the investment per kW generated by half when the production capacities reaches those of current thermal power facilities.
The formulation also allows the study of the short-term operation
of the plant which is interesting towards the integration of solar
energy into the mix of energy of the grid. Furthermore, it can also be
extended to include a coal or gas furnace or a gas turbine, an integrated solar combined cycle ISCC plant. In both cases the energy to
generate the steam and reheat it up and/or to heat up the molten salts
is provided either by the sun or by fossil fuels so that it is possible to
maintain the production capacity constant along the year.

[12]

[13]

[14]

[15]
[16]
[17]
[18]
[19]
[20]

[21]

[22]

Acknowledgements

[23]

The authors would like to acknowledge Salamanca Research for

optimization software licenses.

[24]

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