Energy 29 (2004) 947959

www.elsevier.com/locate/energy

Trough integration into power plantsa study on the

performance and economy of integrated solar combined
cycle systems
Jurgen Dersch a,
, Michael Geyer b, Ulf Herrmann b, Scott A. Jones c,
Bruce Kelly d, Rainer Kistner e, Winfried Ortmanns a, Robert Pitz-Paal a,
Henry Price f
a

Solare Energietechnik, German Aerospace Center (DLR), D-51170 Koln, Germany

b
FLABEG Solar International, Muhlengasse 7, D-50667 Koln, Germany
c
Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM 87185-0703, USA
d
Nexant Inc., 44 Montgomery, Suite 4100, San Francisco, CA 94104-4814, USA
e
Milenio Solar S.A., Avda. de la Paz 41, E-04720 Aguadulce (Almeria), Spain
National Renewable Energy Laboratory, 1617 Cole Blvd., Golden, CO 80401-3393, USA

Abstract
Parabolic trough solar technology has been proven at nine commercial Solar Electric Generating Systems (SEGS) power plants that are operating in the California Mojave desert. These plants utilize steam
Rankine cycle power plants, and as a result, most people associate parabolic trough solar technology
with steam Rankine cycle power plant technology. Although these plants are clearly optimized for their
particular application, other power cycle designs may be appropriate in other situations. Of particular
interest is the integration of parabolic trough solar technology with combined cycle power plant technology. This conguration is referred to as integrated solar combined cycle systems (ISCCS). Four potential projects in India, Egypt, Morocco, and Mexico are considering the ISCCS type solar power cycle
congurations. The key questions are when is the ISCCS conguration preferred over the SEGS power
cycle conguration and how is the ISCCS plant designed to optimize the integration of the solar eld and
the power cycle. This paper reviews the results of a collaborative eort under the International Energy
Agency SolarPACES organization to address these questions and it shows the potential environmental
and economic benets of each conguration.
# 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Corresponding author. Tel.: +49-2203-6012219.

E-mail address: juergen.dersch@dlr.de (J. Dersch).

0360-5442/$ - see front matter # 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/S0360-5442(03)00199-3

948

J. Dersch et al. / Energy 29 (2004) 947959

Nomenclature
ann
annual electricity output, kW h/a
Egen
ann
present value of annual xed cost, $
FPV
fcr
xed charge rate
tot
present value of total investment cost, $
IPV
LEC levelized energy cost, $
LHV lower heating value of fuel, kJ/kg
_ fuel fuel mass ow rate, kg/s
m
OMann
PV present value of operating and maintenance cost, $/a
Pel,net net electrical output, kW
Pth,solar thermal input from solar eld, kW
annual solar share
ss
xnet_elec_solar instantaneous net electrical solar fraction

Greek symbols
gnet_incr_solar net incremental solar eciency
net eciency of the reference power plant
gref

1. Introduction
Integrated solar combined cycle systems (ISCCS) are modern combined cycle power plants
with gas and steam turbines and additional thermal input of solar energy from a eld of parabolic troughs. The plant concept was initially proposed by Luz Solar International [1]. Since this
time, the subject has been discussed in several publications (e.g. [2,3]). Due to the decision of the
Global Environment Facility to provide grants for four ISCCS power plants in India, Egypt,
Morocco and Mexico, interest in this kind of power plants increased again [4,5].
Today, solar thermal power plants based on parabolic troughs represent the only solar power
plant technology tested on a commercial basis. Therefore, they are promising candidates in providing a signicant contribution to carbon dioxide mitigation.
The aim of this paper is to show the advantages and disadvantages of ISCCS compared to
SEGS type solar power plants and to conventional combined cycle (CC) power plants. A base
solar eld size of 270,320 m2 was used for the performance calculations, because this would be
the design size for a 50 MWe SEGS plant at sites like Barstow, California.
Whereas the evaluation of fossil red CC plants can be performed by using the mean values
of ambient temperature, load and full load hours, ISCCS are considerably more aected by
ambient conditions and load proles. Therefore, it is essential to use annual performance calculations for ISCCS plant analysis.

J. Dersch et al. / Energy 29 (2004) 947959

949

2. Integrated solar combined cycle systems

Most commercial CC plants use a multiple-pressure, reheat steam turbine to improve
eciency, but a simplied single-pressure system will be discussed now to illustrate the issues
related to the ISCCS.
Fig. 1 shows an example of an ISCCS with a single-pressure, reheat steam turbine and heat
recovery steam generator (HRSG). Preheated feed water is drawn from the high pressure preheater, evaporated and slightly superheated in the solar steam generator, returned to the
HRSG, and together with the steam from the conventional evaporator, nally superheated to
the live steam temperature. Steam turbine, preheater, superheater and condenser of an ISCCS
have to be larger than the corresponding parts of a CC plant using the same gas turbine type
because of the increased steam mass ow for the integrated plant.
In comparison to existing Rankine cycle power plants with parabolic trough technology
(SEGS) [6], ISCCS plants oer three principal advantages: First, solar energy can be converted
to electric energy at a higher eciency. Second, the incremental costs for a larger steam turbine
are less than the overall unit cost in a solar-only plant. Third, an integrated plant does not suffer from the thermal ineciencies associated with the daily start-up and shutdown of the steam
turbine.

Fig. 1. Scheme of an ISCCS power plant with a single-pressure-reheat steam cycle and the use of solar energy to
replace latent heat of evaporation.

950

J. Dersch et al. / Energy 29 (2004) 947959

3. Integration issues
From a thermodynamic point of view, the solar heat input should be used for the replacement of latent heat and at the highest possible temperature level. The temperature of the heat
v
transfer uid is limited to 400 C to avoid decomposition; therefore, maximum solar steam temv
peratures of about 380 C are possible. Analysis was performed in several steps: plant design,
annual performance evaluation, economic and environmental analysis.
Since this was a general study not focussing on one specic project, the innite analysis space
was limited as follows:
. Heat balance calculations were carried out to compare CC, ISCCS, and SEGS plants.
. Proven parabolic trough technology using oil as a heat transfer uid to collect the solar
energy was used.
. Solar eld size was set by the requirements of a 50 MWe SEGS plant. However, this provided
a solar share for the ISCCS case very close to the maximum solar share that could be integrated while still maintaining the live steam temperature and pressure requirements for most
day and night operation.
. Maximum plant output was held constant for CC and ISCCS cases to insure they were compared on an equal basis.
. Natural gas, the most common fuel in combined cycle power plants, was used.
v
. A high-eciency, triple-pressure, single-reheat steam turbine (565 C=125 bar) and HRSG
were used.
. The solar heat was used at the highest pressure level to make optimal use of the solar power
input.
. The inuence of a 2-tank molten salt thermal energy storage (TES) system and of duct ring
in the heat recovery boiler was considered.
. Performance analyses were conducted for two sites, one with a high solar irradiation
(Barstow, California) and one with a somewhat lower irradiation (Tabernas, Spain).
During the rst step of the investigation process, several plant designs and cycle balance calculations were performed using the commercial computer codes, GateCycle2 [7] and IPSEpro2
[8]. Steady state performance for dierent load cases was calculated. The electrical output from
the gas turbine was only inuenced by ambient temperatures. Supplementary ring and thermal
storage were considered, because the power plants should be able to follow a load curve even in
times of low or without insolation.
In the present paper, ve gures of merit are used to evaluate the dierent cycles and load
cases. The rst gure of merit is called net incremental solar eciency and is used as a measure
for the fuel saved by the solar part of the plant:
gnet

incr solar

_ fuel LHV
Pel;net  gref m
Pth;solar

(1)

Here gref is the overall net electric eciency of the combined cycle (CC) reference plant at the
same ambient temperature. This is an optimized conventional CC plant using the same gas turbine, but has no solar heat input. Since an ISCCS power plant without solar heat input operates

J. Dersch et al. / Energy 29 (2004) 947959

951

in part load, the overall net eciency of a CC reference plant will be higher than the eciency
of the ISCCS without solar heat input. Thus, the second term in the numerator of Eq. (1) may
be considered as the net electrical output of an optimized CC power plant burning the same
amount of fuel as the ISCCS.
The second gure of merit, called instantaneous net electrical solar fraction, is based on the
net incremental solar eciency:
xnet

elec solar

gnet

incr solar Pth;solar

Pel;net

(2)

Using the net incremental solar eciency and the instantaneous net electrical solar fraction,
dened as shown above, gives lower values for these gures of merit than dening them based
on the electrical output of an ISSC plant without solar radiation. This was the intention of the
authors, because it prevents the choice of an ISCCS which produces more carbon dioxide emissions than an optimized CC plant.
Fig. 2 shows some results of the cycle balance calculations. The fuel based net electric
eciency in this diagram is dened as net electric output of the plant divided by fuel mass ow
times LHV. Therefore, the net electric eciency increases up to 68.4% for the ISCCS at design
solar input. The steam cycle eciency is dened as electrical power output of the steam turbine
generator divided by the overall thermal input to the steam cycle from HRSG and solar eld.
This gure of merit may be used as a measure for the process improvement by the integration of
solar steam. Looking at the steam cycle eciency solely, the highest value is provided by the
ISCCS with full supplementary ring. But, this operation mode has by far the lowest net
incremental solar eciency (0%) and thus the highest carbon dioxide emissions per kW h electricity.

Fig. 2. Instantaneous eciencies and solar fraction for an ISCCS power plant in dierent operation modes and for
v
the CC reference plant at 25 C ambient temperature.

952

J. Dersch et al. / Energy 29 (2004) 947959

The results of the steady state calculations were used to generate plant characteristics for the
annual performance simulations. Solar radiation and ambient conditions for the specic site are
modeled by using a typical meteorological year (TMY) at this site. As main output, the performance calculation delivers annual values such as net electricity production, fuel consumption,
annual solar share, dumped solar energy and CO2 emissions. The annual solar share, ss, used in
the next chapter was calculated with the following equation:
ss 1 

annual fuel consumption per kWhISCCS or SEGS

annual fuel consumption per kWh CC reference plant

(3)

In contrast to the instantaneous net electric solar fraction from Eq. (2), the annual solar share
considers the predened load curve as well as start-up and turn down losses, thermal storage
charge state, and scheduled and unscheduled outages. Therefore, it will be considerably lower
than the instantaneous net electric solar fraction.

4. Annual performance results

This paper focuses on the results for an ISCCS plant in comparison to a SEGS plant and a
pure combined cycle. For each integration approach, a conguration without TES and another
with TES are presented. Table 1 shows the main technical parameters of the discussed congurations. A base solar eld size of 270,320 m2 was used, because this would be the design size
for a 50 MWe SEGS plant at sites like Barstow, California.
The nominal electricity output is the same in all ISCCS and CC congurations. The SEGS
plants have a relatively lower electricity output as the corresponding ISCCS with the same solar
eld size. A back-up system is integrated with the ISCCS and SEGS which allows supplementary ring in periods when no solar energy is available but nominal plant output is required. In
addition, two of the congurations have a thermal energy storage, which reduces the use of the
duct burner during non-solar periods. For these congurations, the solar eld has to be
Table 1
Main design parameter for some of the investigated congurations
Plant type

SEGS

SEGS with
TES

ISCCS

ISCCS with
TES

CC

Nominal power (MWe, net)

Solar eld size (m2)
Fuel type
Thermal energy storage (MWht)
Fossil back-up system
BU thermal output (MWt)
Gas turbine power (MWe, gr)
Steam turbine power (MWe, gr)
Plant eciency, net
Total parasitics (MWe)
Cooling system

50
270,320
Natural gas
0
Boiler
139
0.0
50.0
34.7%
3.77
Wet

50
427,280
Natural gas
839
Boiler
139
0.0
50.0
32.6%
6.54
Wet

310
270,320
Natural gas
0
Duct Burner
139
162.0
148.0
68.6%
6.14
Wet

310
427,280
Natural gas
839
Duct Burner
139
162.0
148.0
68.1%
8.61
Wet

310
0
Natural gas
0

0
201.0
109.0
56.5%
3.77
Wet

J. Dersch et al. / Energy 29 (2004) 947959

953

enlarged to collect enough solar energy to charge the storage. This, of course, increases investment cost, but leads to higher solar fractions. The output of the reference CC in Table 1 refers
to scaled power plant in order to compare the fuel consumption of the plant to the fuel consumption of the ISCCS.
In Fig. 2, the eciencies for dierent loads and operation modes are presented. However, to
assess the overall performance of an ISCCS, it is necessary to analyse how many hours per year
the plant will operate in the design point and how often at part load. The performance analysis
over the whole year provides the solar fraction of the produced electricity and the annual CO2

Fig. 3. Load curves used for the annual performance calculation.

954

J. Dersch et al. / Energy 29 (2004) 947959

emissions. The solar fraction, of course, depends on the local weather conditions. Therefore, for
a detailed annual performance analysis, the direct normal irradiation (DNI) at the site where
the power plant should be built has to be known. In this study, we conducted our analysis for
two sites, one with high solar irradiation, Barstow in California (2717 kW h/m2a), and one with
a somewhat lower irradiation, Tabernas in Spain (2023 kW h/m2a). A TMY data set has been
used, which contains hourly values for the DNI, ambient temperature and wind speed for one
complete year. Hence, the annual performance calculation are also carried out in hourly steps.
However, only the annual sums are presented below.
For a daily and annual performance calculation also the operation strategy of the power
plant has to be stipulated. Two strategies are investigated here: a solar dispatching and a scheduled load operation mode. In the scheduled load mode, the plant operation follows a xed
demand curve. The used load curves are shown in Fig. 3.
The scheduled load curve follows a demand prole, which is typical for many countries. The
electricity demand is high during the day and during the evening. During night hours, the
demand is somewhat lower. Therefore, the plants operate 16 h at full load and 8 h at 80%. If no
solar energy is available to full the load curve, the fossil back-up is used.
In the solar dispatching mode, no specic load prole is prescribed. The gas turbine operates
at full load for 24 h. The output of the gas turbine then depends only on the ambient temperature and the site elevation. If solar energy is available, the steam turbine is boosted and the total
plant output increases. No back-up burner is used in this mode.
Fig. 4 shows the results of the annual performance calculation for the ISCCS cases and the
CC. The gure gives the annual electricity output and the solar share. For each case, runs were
performed for the two sites, California and Spain, and for the load proles presented above.
In scheduled load operation mode, the annual electricity production is the same for all congurations, while in solar dispatching operation, the electricity production is aected by the plant

Fig. 4. Results of annual performance calculation for ISCCS and CC.

J. Dersch et al. / Energy 29 (2004) 947959

955

conguration and the local weather condition. The output of the CC is the highest in this mode,
because the plant operates at full load for 24 h. The ISCCS congurations operate at full load
only, when thermal energy is available from the solar eld or the thermal storage.
In California, where the solar radiation is higher than in Spain, the output and the solar
share of the ISCCS are higher.
Also, it can be observed that the solar share is higher in solar dispatching mode than in
scheduled load. The scheduled load conguration requires periodic use of the duct burner,
which increases the fossil fuel consumption and thereby decreases the solar share. Also, the
solar share is higher for congurations with thermal storage than those without TES. In California, solar shares of nearly 10% can be achieved. For a pure combined cycle, the solar share
is, of course, 0%.
Fig. 5 shows specic carbon dioxide emissions for ISCCS in comparison to SEGS and CC
plants for dierent sites, congurations, operation modes and solar eld areas. All ISCCS congurations show lower carbon dioxide emissions than the corresponding CC reference plants.
From Fig. 2, it becomes evident that SEGS plants oer the opportunity of solar-only operation
with almost no carbon dioxide emissions if they are operated in solar dispatching mode.
Although a small amount of fossil fuel is used for start-up and warming during non-sunshine
hours at these plants, the value is beyond the plotting scale of Fig. 2.
If 24-h operation is required, SEGS plants without storage would be a very bad solution, at
least in Spain, because they would need a lot of supplementary ring with low eciency compared to an optimized CC. Increasing the solar eld size leads to lower specic carbon dioxide

Fig. 5. Specic CO2 emissions for dierent sites, plant congurations, operation modes and solar eld areas.

956

J. Dersch et al. / Energy 29 (2004) 947959

emissions for all cases, but because of the high costs of this part, it is not useful to build an
arbitrarily large solar eld. Economic details are discussed in the next section. In California and
under the load prole used here, SEGS and ISCCS plants have very similar specic CO2 emissions if they are built without a storage. Adding a thermal storage would decrease the specic
carbon dioxide emissions of SEGS plants in the scheduled load operation mode.

5. Economic analysis
The driving force for the integration of parabolic troughs into conventional power cycles is to
replace some of the fossil fuel by renewable sources and thus reduce the greenhouse gas emission (GHG) of a combined cycle power plant. However, power generation from renewable
resources is normally associated with higher initial investment costs and lower operation costs.
The objective of this economic analysis is to assess the cost eciency of ISCCS power plants,
determine the economics of dierent solar integration alternatives and compare it with conventional power generation systems. For the comparative assessment, two levelized energy costs
(LEC) were used as the gures of merit. The LEC is the present value of the life-cycle costs converted into a stream of equal payments. As an advantage, the LEC cost gure allows an economic evaluation of dierent power generating technologies with varying capacities, full load
hours, lifetime, etc. The computed LEC values for power generation systems can be signicantly
inuenced by the methodology and assumptions employed. A widespread methodology for the
LEC calculation is the approach outlined in [9]. The methodology applied here is based on that
approach but is slightly modied. The goal of this study is a project independent assessment of
dierent integration options; thus, any project-specic data (e.g. tax inuences, depreciation,
etc.) should be disregarded. The LEC values have been calculated according to the following
equation:
LEC

tot
ann
IPV
 fcr OMann
PV FPV
ann
Egen

(4)

Beside the methodology, the determination of realistic input assumptions has a signicant
inuence on the LEC results. The general parameters and assumptions used in the economic
analysis are summarized in Table 2.
The annual O&M costs, i.e. all operation and maintenance expenses other than fuel expenses,
had to be determined from case to case since it contains a xed component and an outputdependent component. The annual values uctuate for the ISCCS between 6.6 million US$ per
year and 7.5 million US$ per year.
LEC calculations for an ISCCS plant with and without thermal storage for a project site in
Barstow (California) and one in Tabernas (Spain) were performed. The LEC increase for cases
with a higher solar share but the calculated values are very similar for all ISCCS plants investigated here (from 3.9 to 4.2). This is due to the fact that the LEC are dominated by the fossil
part of the plants.
In order to determine the costs of a solar generated kWh, the LEC of the ISCCS plant has
to be divided into a solar LEC and a conventional LEC. The last named corresponds to the
power generating costs of reference CC (LECref.CC) with the same capacity and the same load

J. Dersch et al. / Energy 29 (2004) 947959

957

Table 2
General parameters for LEC calculation (base case scenario)
Item

Parameter

Units

Constant value real discount rate

Lifetime of ISCCS plant and reference plant
Fuel price (Gas)

6.5
25.0
11.1
1.26
2.0
2.5
220.0
550.0
600.0
35.0
2002

%
years
US/m3
US/kWhth
%
%
US$/m2
US$/kW
US$/kW
US$/kWhth

Annual fuel price escalation rate

Annual ination rate
Spec. investment costs for solar field HTF system
Spec. investment costs for conventional CC
Spec. investment costs for conventional components of ISCCS
Spec. investment costs for thermal storage
Base year for discounting

prole. By means of the solar share, ss, the solar LEC can be calculated according to the following equation:
LECsolar

LECISCCS or SEGS  1  ss  LECref:CC

ss

(5)

In Fig. 6, solar LEC are plotted. The results show that ISCCS plants will have lower solar
LEC than SEGS plants at the same site and the same operating scheme. This dierence becomes

Fig. 6. Solar LEC for dierent sites, plant congurations, operation modes and solar eld areas.

958

J. Dersch et al. / Energy 29 (2004) 947959

more signicant for the scheduled load operation mode. Furthermore, solar LEC are lower for
ISCCS in scheduled load operation than in solar dispatching operation mode in most of the
cases. In Spain, without a thermal storage, this is only valid for the largest solar eld size investigated. In contrast to this, SEGS solar LEC are higher in scheduled load than in solar dispatching mode. This is due to the large amount of fossil fuel which has to be used with low
eciency during night times when SEGS plants are operated 24 h a day. The investment on a
thermal storage for ISCCS plants seems to be useful, because the solar LEC are about 10%
15% lower with a thermal storage.
6. Conclusions
ISCCS provide an interesting way of solar electricity generation. If properly designed and
operated in the design manner, ISCCS plants show lower specic CO2 emissions than optimized
CC plants at the same site and under the same operating conditions. ISCCS provide a better
solution than SEGS plants, if 24-h operation a day is required. This is valid if both types have
no thermal storage.
If the ISCCS plants are supposed to have high eciencies at times without solar energy input,
the fraction of solar thermal input is limited. In this study, a triple-pressure single-reheat cycle
was used with an instantaneous net electrical solar fraction of 17.5% at design point. Under
excellent solar conditions as in the Californian Mojave desert, this results in an annual solar
share of 5.6% without and 9.4% with a thermal storage. These values are valid for solar dispatching operation mode which means that the plant can use all incoming solar energy without
any restrictions on load management. For sites with lower insulation or for scheduled load
operation, the solar share values are even lower.
SEGS plants are able to deliver higher annual solar shares and they are suitable technology if
solar-only plants are required and no load restrictions prevail. With thermal storage technology available in a commercial scale, SEGS plants may even be used in load scheduling mode
with considerable load demand during non-sunshine hours.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank the International Energy Agency SolarPACES organization for
supporting this cooperative project. Sandia National Laboratories contributions were supported by the US Department of Energy under contract DE-AC04-94AL85000.
References
[1] Johansson TB, et al., editors. Renewable energy, sources for fuels and electricity. Washington, DC: Island Press;
1993, p. 2345.
[2] Solar Thermal Electricity in the Mediterranean, EU Contract APAS-RENA CT94014, Final Report. European
Union, 1994.
[3] Allani Y, Favrat D, von Spakovsky MR. CO2 mitigation through the use of hybrid solar-combined cycles.
Energy Conversion Manage 1997;38:S6617.

J. Dersch et al. / Energy 29 (2004) 947959

959

[4] Rheinlander J, Horn M, Fuhring H. GuD-Kraftwerk mit integriertem Solarsystem. Brennsto Warme
Kraft 2001;53(6):558.
[5] Kelly B, Herrmann U, Hale MJ. Optimization studies for integrated solar combined cycles. Proceedings of Solar
Forum 2001; Solar Energy: The Power to Choose, Washington, DC, April 2125. 2001.
[6] KJC Operating Company. Boron, CA 93516. See also: http://www.kjcsolar.com/.
[7] Heat balance and process simulation package IPSEpro: http://www.SimTechnology.com/.
[8] Heat balance and process simulation package GateCycle: http://www.gepower.com/enter/.
[9] International Energy Agency (IEA). Guidelines for the economic analysis of renewable energy technology applications. 1991.