POWER TOWER SYSTEMS

Power tower systems rely on large flat mirrors, called heliostats, which track the
sun throughout the day and focus its rays onto a receiver located at the top of a
centrally located and elevated tower (central receiver system). Inside the receiver, a
heat transfer fluid, which retains heat efficiently, gets heated to around 600°C and
produces steam. The latter expands into a turbine to, eventually, produce electric
power. Earliest power tower systems used water as the working fluid. Water gets
pumped to the receiver at the top of the centered tower, it gets heated into steam by
the concentrated solar thermal energy, and then, if no storage is desired, the steam
is directly used to drive the traditional power cycle that generates electricity as
done in conventional power plants (i.e., Rankine power cycle). The superhot steam
can also be stored in a tank for later use when the clouds block the sun or for a few
hours after dark, for instance. Due to the low heat transfer and weak energy storage
capabilities of water, other fluids, such as molten salt, were then preferred over
water in this type of CSP system.

The working process is quite similar to the direct steam design of power tower
technology except that water is replaced by cold molten salt. The latter gets
pumped to the receiver to be heated; it then flows back and through a heat
exchanger, and its heat gets transferred to water to produce steam. Electricity is
then produced in the power generation block of the system using steam. The
system also allows for storing the heated salt in a hot storage tank instead of using
it immediately for making steam that will be used in the conventional Rankine
power cycle.
POWER TOWER DESIGNS

Power towers (also known as ‘central tower’ power plants or ‘heliostat’ power
plants) capture and focus the sun’s thermal energy with thousands of tracking
mirrors (called heliostats) in roughly a two square mile field. A tower resides in the
centre of the heliostat field. The heliostats focus concentrated sunlight on a
receiver which sits on top of the tower. Within the receiver the concentrated
sunlight heats molten salt to over 1000°F (538°C). The heated molten salt then
flows into a thermal storage tank where it is stored, maintaining 98 per cent
thermal efficiency, and eventually pumped to a steam generator. The steam drives
a standard turbine to generate electricity. This process, also known as the ‘Rankine
cycle’ is similar to a standard coal-fired power plant, except it is fuelled by clean
and free solar energy.

The advantage of this design above the parabolic trough design is the higher
temperature. Thermal energy at higher temperatures can be converted to electricity
more efficiently and can be more cheaply stored for later use. Furthermore, there is
less need to flatten the ground area. In principle a power tower can be built on a
hillside. Mirrors can be flat and plumbing is concentrated in the tower. The
disadvantage is that each mirror must have its own dual-axis control, while in the
parabolic trough design one axis can be shared for a large array of mirrors. In June
2008, eSolar, a California-based company founded by Idealab CEO Bill Gross with
funding from Google, announced a power purchase agreement (PPA) with the
utility Southern California Edison to produce 245 megawatts of power. Also, in
February 2009, eSolar announced it had licensed its technology to two
development partners, the Princeton, N.J.-based NRG Energy, Inc., and the India-
based ACME Group. In the deal with NRG, the companies announced plans to
jointly build 500 MW of concentrating solar thermal plants throughout the United
States. The target goal for the ACME Group was nearly double; ACME plans to
start construction on its first eSolar power plant in the year 2012, and will build a
total of 1 gigawatt over the next 10 years.

eSolar’s proprietary sun-tracking software coordinates the movement of 24,000

1 m2 mirrors per 1 tower using optical sensors to adjust and calibrate the mirrors in
real time. This allows for a high density of reflective material which enables the
development of modular CSP power plants in 46 megawatt (MW) units on
approximately π square mile parcels of land, resulting in a land-to-power ratio of 4
acres (16,000 m2) per 1 MW.

Bright Source Energy entered into a series of power purchase agreements with
Pacific Gas and Electric Company in March 2008 for up to 900 MW of electricity,
the largest solar power commitment ever made by a utility. Bright Source is
currently developing a number of solar power plants in Southern California, with
construction of the first plant planned to start in 2009.

In June 2008, Bright Source Energy dedicated its 4–6 MW Solar Energy
Development Center (SEDC) in Israel’s Negev Desert. The site, located in the
Rotem Industrial Park, features more than 1600 heliostats that track the sun and
reflect light onto a 60-m high tower. The concentrated energy is then used to heat a
boiler atop the tower to 550 degrees Celsius, generating superheated steam. A
working tower power plant is PS10 in Spain with a capacity of 11 MW. The
15 MW Solar Tres plant with heat storage is under construction in Spain. In South
Africa, a 100 MW solar power plant is planned with 4000–5000 heliostat mirrors,
each having an area of 140 m2.
Morocco is building five solar thermal power plants around Ouasarzate. The sites
will produce about 2000 MW by 2012. Over ten thousand hectors of land will be
needed to sustain all of the sites.

Out of commission are the 10 MW Solar One (later redeveloped and made into
Solar Two) and the 2 MW Themis plants.

A cost/performance comparison between power tower and parabolic trough

concentrators was made by the NREL which estimated that by 2020 electricity
could be produced from power towers for 5.47 ë/kWh and for 6.21 ë/kWh from
parabolic troughs. The capacity factor for power towers was estimated to be
72.9 per cent and 56.2 per cent for parabolic troughs. There is some hope that the
development of cheap, durable, mass producible heliostat power plant components
could bring this cost down.
POWER TOWER SYSTEMS

A power tower system uses a large field of flat, sun-tracking mirrors known as
heliostats to focus and concentrate sunlight onto a receiver on the top of a tower
(Fig. 1.9). A heat-transfer fluid heated in the receiver is used to generate steam,
which, in turn, is used in a conventional turbine generator to produce electricity.

Figure 1.9. Simplified scheme of a power tower technology power system.

Some power towers use water/steam as heat-transfer fluid. Other advanced designs
are experimenting with molten nitrate salt because of its superior heat transfer and
energy-storage capabilities. The energy-storage capability, or thermal storage,
allows the system to continue to dispatch electricity during cloudy weather or at
night.
Compared with solar PV technologies, solar thermal technologies are relatively
older, more mature, more space-efficient, and less complex. Both technologies
share some of the environmental impacts such as water usage, possibly hazardous
waste, land use, landscape fragmentation, possible extinction of local wildlife, and
some microclimate changes.

POWER TOWER OR CENTRAL RECEIVER SYSTEM

In power towers or central receiver systems, mirrored heliostats concentrate

sunlight on a receiver placed at the top of a tower, and it is designed to reduce
heliostat shadowing and increase optical efficiency. This type of point focus
system can achieve high optical concentrations as well as high receiver
temperatures and improved power cycle efficiency relative to a line-focus system
can be obtained. A solar central receiver system consists of the following
subsystems:

(i) Collector system or heliostat field, consisting of several thousand planar mirrors
called heliostats, individually tracking the sun with a two-axis system. The mirrors
can be placed all around the tower, or only on the north side of the tower
depending on the latitude.

(ii)Solar receiver, where the concentrated solar energy is absorbed. In the receiver,
the working fluid or the HTF is heated with the help of concentrated solar energy.
The fluids used in the receiver may be either molten salt of nitrates (NaNO 3 and
KNO3) or water. Other fluids, such as air, sodium, or helium, can also be used. A
schematic diagram of a power tower with heliostats and solar receiver is shown in
Fig. 5.9. The solar receiver may be of various types such as tubular, volumetric
receiver, etc.
 Figure 5.9. Schematic diagram of a solar central receiver with heliostats.

(iii) Heat storage system, which is used to provide energy to the working fluid
when in sufficient sunlight is available during the nighttime or on a cloudy day.

(iv) Power block consisting of a steam generator and alternator.

The sunlight is concentrated between 300 and 1500 times on the receiver due to
which very high temperatures of the working fluid, ranging between 800 and
2000°C, can be reached. Solar tower power plants can thus reach higher power
levels compared to other concentrated technologies, allowing for them to be best
suited in utility scale applications ranging from 30 to 400 MWe or more. Ivanpah
Solar Electric Generating System, situated in Mojave Desert, California, is
currently the world's largest solar thermal power station, with a gross capacity of
392 MW.