Techno-economic performance of concentrating solar power plants under the climatic conditions of the southern region of Tunisia

Abstract This work aims to study the performance of deploying concentrated solar power (CSP) parabolic trough plants under the climatic conditions of the southern region of Tunisia “Tataouine”, taking into account the consideration of the limited water availability in such desert regions. The ground meteorological data from the high precision enerMENA station; which are installed in Tataouine are used in the simulations runs. The reference solar power plant is based on parabolic trough concentrating technology and has (50 MW e ) power capacity and (7.5) hours of storage at full load. The results of the simulations are validated by the published data of the reference plant “Andasol Type”, and are compared to each other. In a following step, an examination of the influence of meteorological parameters on the performances of the concentrating solar power plant for both the dry and wet cooling options is carried out. Finally, a comparative study of the power plants in study region for both economic and technical performance of the two simulated cooling options is done and compared with the reference power plant “Andasol-1” in Spain. The technical simulations show excellent results regarding the dry cooled CSP power plants and it will be taken into consideration in the future planning of new projects by cause of high DNI specifically at the study and generally in the desert region. Thus if the Andasol-1 CSP plant in southern Spain is shifted to Tataouine in southern Tunisia, and its wet cooling system is replaced with a dry one, it will have a competitive electricity output with a difference that does not exceed (9%), also water consumption will be reduced by (93.3%), and the levelized cost of electricity will be lower by (1.45%) in terms of 18.28 c€/kW h e .