Towards an efficient integrated CSP production network: sustainability, storage and power-to-X selection, based on social metrics

Abstract

The sustainability and energy sovereignty of electricity production systems is one of the greatest concerns for countries today. Several countries are choosing technologies that are not dependent on fossil fuels. Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) plants are renewable-based facilities which exploit solar radiation to produce electricity, but the oversizing of these facilities to meet the demand during winter is not desirable. In this work, a novel formulation for the deployment of a CSP plants network with energy storage solutions is developed, considering region-related parameters (such as social metrics, sun hours, water availability, etc.) and four types of storage: compressed air (CAES), hydrogen, ammonia, and methanol. The problem was formulated as a multi-period mixed integer linear programing (MILP) problem and considering Spain as case study. The model selected CAES as the best energy storage solution, and the results show the use of CAES storage decreases the total energy production by 21%, but increases LCOE from 0.74-0.82 to 98.34 €/kWh. The regions are located in the south of Spain, because the solar radiation and the social metrics strongly influence the decision-making.