Solar Booster Augmentation for Existing Coal Fired Power Plant (A Feasibility Study)

Abstract: The fast depletion of fossil fuel has increased the havoc and need of finding an alternative for the existing fossil fuel based energy industry. As a result, many renewable energy sources such as Solar, Wind, Geo Thermal, Bio mass, etc... are being looked in to. One of the major sources of renewable energy is our sun. There are two methods of tapping the energy from the sun. 1. Solar Thermal It involves using the sun’s heat directly in some processes or indirectly to produce electricity. 2. Photo Voltaic It involves using the light to produce electricity using Photo Voltaic cells. This report involves only the Solar Thermal part where the sun’s heat is indirectly used to produce electricity. This report focuses mainly on a method known as Compact Linear Fresnel Reflectors (CLFR). This method involves the focusing of sun’s energy to an over head tube through mirrors arranged to form the shape similar to that of a Fresnel lens and hence the name. Water runs in the over head tube, the focused energy from the sun, heats up the over head tube and produces steam which in turn runs a steam turbine which in turn produces electricity. This report focuses mainly the potential of using CLFR technology to be augmented in to existing coal fired power plants in India. India has a solar reception of 5 Peta watt hours per year with an average of 4 – 7 kW/m2 DNI. One of National Thermal Power Corporation’s Coal fired thermal power station, Dadri Thermal Power Station, has been chosen for the purpose of case study for this particular thesis. Since there is coal shortage at the power plant location and the plant is not able to produce the peak load, our primary objective was to achieve the production of peak load. The existing power cycle and the solar steam augmented power cycles have been simulated using Thermoflow software and the results have been tabulated.