Some of the most frequently asked questions about Bluesolar and our thermal storage
How does the BlueSolar PV/thermal panel performs against a pure PV panel?
The BlueSolar panel loses around 16% in a Solar Simulator. However, the operating temperature is around 15-20C lower which leads to a better Performance Ratio. This lower temperature compensates the drop in the solar simulator and the real operating performances are quite similar.
The heliostats do not track the sun perpendicularly which means some cosine losses?
Given the use of water as HTF, which can be easily pumped with no corrosion and solidification issues such as those found in molten salts, there is no need of a unique tower which means the power plant can be designed with multi-tower using high efficiency North Solar Field configurations.
The cosine efficiency of this design with optimized aiming strategies is around 88-90%, similar to PV 1 axis.
How should be operated the BlueSolar plant?
The PV production will be used for daytime and the turbine production would be reserved for late afternoon and nighttime production.
In highly saturated PV markets with daytime prices crashed, the system can be designed to allocate all the production via turbine out of daytime window.
What is the optimum thermal storage for Bluesolar?
This technology is ideal to be coupled with pressurized liquid water thermal storage.
The tower can easily generate water @ 190C and 15 bar which can be economically stored in tanks while the electricity of the PV panel can generate a cold water reservoir between 10-15C that will be stored in water pits.
Both reservoirs can run an organic rankine cycle to provide dispatchable synchronous energy.
What is the roundtrip efficiency of this storage?
85%, as defined by COP Chiller x ORC cycle efficiency = 4,5 x 19
Benchmark vs standard Li Battery system?
Below a comparison table with the most relevant economic & technical parameters of both storage systems
