COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF TWO SOLAR DRIVEN CYCLES UNDER CLEAR AND CLOUDY SKY CONDITIONS.

The paper presents a comparative analysis of two solar powered systems aiming to produce electricity. The potential user could be a duplex house or an office building. One system consists of an Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) modeled to operate at variable mass flow rate, constraint by the heat source temperature which is provided by a parabolic dish collector. The second one is a Stirling engine modeled by taking into account the internal and external irreversibilities, using the concentrated solar radiation from dish collector, too. Both engines have to deliver the same electrical power (constraint), according to the user's daily energy consumption profile. The study considers the daily solar radiation and ambient temperature variation under cloudy sky conditions, and the receiver heat losses dependence on these data. The analysis results emphasize the required solar collector dimensions in each case. The comparison is done to previous obtained results under clear sky conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]