The electricity production from concentrated solar thermal power (CSP) has to cope with two main challenges, the reduction of the water consumption and also the improvement of the cost-effectiveness of the CSP technology. In this kind of plants, the water is used for cleaning the mirrors, in the steam cycle and in the cooling system.
To obtain an efficient electrical power generation, the turbine condenser must be cooled efficiently. Wet cooling is the traditional solution, despite its high-water requirements, representing up to 90% of the total water used in a wet cooled CSP plant. Moving to a dry cooled power block avoids this high-water usage but reduces turbine efficiency compared to a wet cooled system. Indeed, as assessed in the case study CSP Plant in Ma’an in Jordan , for equal electricity productions, implementation of dry cooling technology compared to wet one increases the investment cost by 16.4% and the LCOE by 16.1%. For those reasons, Engineering, Procurement, and Construction (EPC) contractors turn to dry cooling only when local regulations on the water use force them to do so. Therefore, by reducing the amount of water used for solar field cleaning, steam generation and for wet cooling, and by addressing the lack of efficiency of dry cooled CSP plants, SOLWARIS project will actively support a significant reduction in water usage in CSP plants and improve efficiency of dry ones.
The overall purpose of the SOLWARIS project is to upscale, implement and demonstrate cost-effective technologies and strategies that bring about a significant reduction of water of CSP plants while ensuring excellent performance of electrical power production. The SOLWARIS approach proposed will tackle all segments of water consumption in a CSP plant by:
• 90 % for reduction of cleaning operations;
• 15 to 28 % for cooling of turbine condenser;
• 90 % for recovery and recycling of water;
Then, a total reduction of water consumption by:
• 35 % for a wet cooled CSP plant;
• 90 % for a dry cooled CSP plant;
