Performance Assessment of ORC based Thermal Power Plant to PV based Plant in Outer Himalayas region of India

This paper deals with the ORC based thermal power generation suitable for low thermal energy source to electricity. In this study, we evaluate the efficiency of ORC cycle in foothills of Himalayas by using Engineering Equation Solver software with ammonia water mixture as working fluid, where mass fraction of ammonia is taken as 0.5, 0.7 and 0.9. Parabolic Trough collector is used for water heating, which further used in heat Exchanger for ORC cycles. Analysis shows that the efficiency of NH3H2O based plants cycle increases with decrease in concentration of ammonia as a result the 0.5 mass fraction of ammonia gives 14.79% of efficiency where the condenser temperature is taken as 293K. Thus observed that the increase in condenser temperature causes the decreases in efficiency of overall cycle for the same heat source. While comparing with solar PV plant the practical efficiency is high for PV based solar plant for high altitude solar radiation, but working hour is limited while continuous change in weather and often rainfall is the major drawback, other factor like non-disposable policy and limited life span of solar PV cell makes it less efficient and non-nature friendly in comparison to solar thermal power plant. This paper also evaluate the area, cost and power generation for 15% efficient solar PV plant for the same geographical location by ISRO-VEDAS. On analyzing the practical efficiency has been found at par with the solar PV module.