Techno-economical performance improvement of Algeria Solar Power Plant 1 (SPP1)

Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) facilities are a relatively new technology with great expansion potential. In this study, the optimal configuration of parabolic trough solar thermal power plant using 4 different fluids ( synthetic oil and molten salt) with integration of new technologies as Backup (BS) and Storage Thermal Energy (STE) systems in Hassi Rmel in southern of Algeria, using System Advisor Model (SAM) software, to enhance the performance of SPP1 implemented in the same region in Algeria has been determined, in order to:(i): achieving a value of 500 MWt only with solar energy , (ii): completely eliminated the use of the gas , and finally, used 100 percent solar power in this plant. From results, the thermal produced by the backup system is 118 MWt which is insufficient, and requires a high value of FFF to meet the energy requirement while increasing the quantity of the gas. This configuration is the same as the actual configuration of SPP1. Therefore, the Backup system only isn't efficient and is thus excluded . Then, the storage system requires a big solar field to produce a great quantity of the thermal energy. A value of 1200 MWt is obtained by the solar field with SM= 3.8.