Comparison of different CSP technologies for combined power and cooling production

The power plant is supposed to operate in island mode, having to meet power and cooling demand for a population of about 50,000 inhabitants in the Saudi desert region. Solar fields and storage system were sized according to a techno-economic optimization algorithm for the minimization of the investment costs. The simulation results show the beneficial effect of the combined power and cooling production in terms of peak load shaving. Compared to the troughs, solar tower exhibits a higher efficiency, thus requiring a lower aperture area and lower investment costs. The techno-economic analysis shows that the axis orientation has a strong impact on the trough collectors and that east-west oriented devices perform better for the investigated load-following application.