Wide Solar Thermal Electricity (STE) market, generated by Concentrating Solar Power (CSP), is a reality today with 5.5 GW in operation worldwide in 2018 - is expected to more than double over the next decade, 260 GW in 2030, 664GW in 2040 and to reach a 12% of total electricity generation by 2050 (982 GW). This forecast has been reinforced recently after the truly historic Paris Agreement at Convention on Climate Change in Paris (COP21) where it was acknowledged that deep reductions in global emissions will be required to achieve a reduction of global greenhouse gas. STE technology can provide reliable energy supply and reduce CO2 emissions. Currently, there are 7,390 MW planned and announced for CSP plants projects in the forthcoming years. The investment foreseen to cover this growth will be over €16 billion in 2020. It is expected to save 1.2 billion tonnes in 2050.
Despite this encouraging scenario, CSP growth has been slower than expected because several issues have not been overcome yet. It is not as cost-efficient as other technologies making difficult its access to the generation mix. Its low cost-competitiveness comes from the need of a large up-front investment to deploy CSP plants in comparison with conventional energy plants or other renewable facilities. Another not-solved aspect is flexibility, since one of the main issues of the electrical market is the complexity to match the supply and demand curves due to the arbitrariness of the sun. Finally, some CSP technologies bring some environmental issues. In current CSP plants, soil, groundwater and surface water, air and human presence could be affected by leaks or emissions of synthetic oil used as HTF (heat transfer fluid). Furthermore, specifically, CSP plants need a meaningful amount of water to operate since are often designed to use water for cooling at the back-end of the thermal cycle. These water requirements can result in difficulties in arid areas, e.g. in the Middle East & North Africa (MENA) region, being the region in the world experiencing the hardest water stress.
In this framework, MSLOOP project was born to offer an innovative solution to overcome the mentioned barriers. The objective of MSLOOP is to validate a business opportunity consisting of developing a cost effective solar field for CSP Parabolic Trough Power Plants using optimized ternary molten salts as HTF with an innovative hybridization system. The result of the project is a new solution of CSP commercial plant with a levelized cost of energy reduction and capable of providing firm and dispatchable electricity through a hybrid plant concept and more environmentally sustainable than the deployed CSP technologies.
The starting point of the project was the integration of two prototypes: 500 m loop representative of a solar field (LAZOSALES) connected to a hybridization system (HYSOL); both combine synergies to succeed in achieving the objectives of increasing flexibility of energy dispatch at a competitive cost. With this basis, MSLOOP proved the increase in cost-competitiveness in terms of CAPEX and OPEX by carrying out innovative solutions that make the technology more reliable. MSLOOP is configured to make possible the integration of a hybrid plant concept, providing firm and dispatchable electricity using 100% renewable energy sources. MSLOOP eliminates the oil issues by using an environmentally friendlier HTF and has reduced the water consumption without penalizing the CSP plant performance.
