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Sectorial reflectance-based cleaning policy of heliostats for Solar Tower power plants

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  • Truong-Ba, Huy
  • Cholette, Michael E.
  • Picotti, Giovanni
  • Steinberg, Theodore A.
  • Manzolini, Giampaolo

Abstract

For concentrating Solar Tower (ST) power plants, heliostats must be cleaned to maintain high productivity, but this comes at the cost of cleaning expenditures. Striking the correct balance remains challenging, due in part to the fact that soiling losses are location-dependent, stochastic, seasonal, and spatially inhomogeneous across the field. In this paper, novel reflectance-based cleaning policies are developed that trigger and prioritize cleaning of different solar field sectors based on reflectance measurements. In contrast to existing approaches, these policies have the potential to mitigate the effect of stochastic soiling losses and allocate finite cleaning resources by considering the spatial inhomogeneity of soiling. The optimization of the policy is conducted using the approximate Markov Decision Process (MDP) paradigm that utilizes a simulation model based on a recently developed physical soiling model. The proposed approach is applied to a case study on a hypothetical ST plant located in South Australia. The proposed policies are benchmarked with other traditional time-based cleaning policies and a previously developed reflectance-based policy. The results indicate a considerable benefit of sectorial reflectance-based cleaning strategies to other benchmarked policies (i.e. ∼2% savings on total cleaning costs). Moreover, in case where the per-cleaning costs (e.g. water, fuel) are significant compared to the fixed costs (e.g. truck depreciation), the savings of proposed sectorial cleaning policies are greater (∼10% savings).

Suggested Citation

  • Truong-Ba, Huy & Cholette, Michael E. & Picotti, Giovanni & Steinberg, Theodore A. & Manzolini, Giampaolo, 2020. "Sectorial reflectance-based cleaning policy of heliostats for Solar Tower power plants," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 166(C), pages 176-189.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:renene:v:166:y:2020:i:c:p:176-189
    DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2020.11.129
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Sarver, Travis & Al-Qaraghuli, Ali & Kazmerski, Lawrence L., 2013. "A comprehensive review of the impact of dust on the use of solar energy: History, investigations, results, literature, and mitigation approaches," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 22(C), pages 698-733.
    2. Binotti, Marco & Astolfi, Marco & Campanari, Stefano & Manzolini, Giampaolo & Silva, Paolo, 2017. "Preliminary assessment of sCO2 cycles for power generation in CSP solar tower plants," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 204(C), pages 1007-1017.
    3. Ashley, Thomas & Carrizosa, Emilio & Fernández-Cara, Enrique, 2019. "Heliostat field cleaning scheduling for Solar Power Tower plants: A heuristic approach," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 235(C), pages 653-660.
    4. Maghami, Mohammad Reza & Hizam, Hashim & Gomes, Chandima & Radzi, Mohd Amran & Rezadad, Mohammad Ismael & Hajighorbani, Shahrooz, 2016. "Power loss due to soiling on solar panel: A review," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 1307-1316.
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    Cited by:

    1. Anderson, Cody B. & Picotti, Giovanni & Cholette, Michael E. & Leslie, Bruce & Steinberg, Theodore A. & Manzolini, Giampaolo, 2023. "Heliostat-field soiling predictions and cleaning resource optimization for solar tower plants," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 352(C).

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