Search

The choice of condenser cooling option for concentrating solar power (CSP) plants is likely to affect their techno-economic feasibility. In view of this, an attempt has been made to assess relative techno-economics and net life cycle CO 2 -eq emissions mitigation (LCCM) potential for 50 MW nominal capacity wet-cooled and dry-cooled parabolic trough solar collector (PTSC) and dry-cooled solar power tower (SPT) based CSP plants with 6.0 h of thermal energy storage for two potential locations in India. It was observed that though dry cooling is likely to save significant amount of water (∼92%) in PTSC based plants, the same shall result in higher capital cost, higher performance penalty and higher parasitic power requirements leading to around 20% higher levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) as compared to wet-cooled PTSC based plants. It was also observed that the dry-cooled SPT based plants shall be able to deliver up to 4.5% higher annual electricity output and LCOE is also likely to be lowered by 13% than wet-cooled PTSC based plants. Considering emissions embodied and emissions associated with water transport/extraction from the source and water treatment, the estimation of LCCM from the PTSC and SPT based CSP plants have also been undertaken. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]