Analysis of Thermal Storage Temperature Control for Solar Thermal Power Plant

Utilization of new and renewable energy sources is currently one of Indonesia's intensified agendas, especially for increasing the electrification ratio and providing green power generations. As the equator line crossing country, Indonesia has abundant solar irradiation throughout the year. This potential makes solar energy as emerging alternative for accomplishing these programs. This paper proposes a temperature-based control mechanism for the thermal energy storage of solar thermal power plant that uses Rankine cycle. The solar thermal power plant is set for based-load power generation. As the system model, a commercial power plant and a typical parabolic through set are adopted for verifying the proposed concept by using Ebsilon Pro 15. The results show that the proposed mechanism can perform better in reduced (33%) storage capacity requirement and more constant power output than the conventional control mechanism.