Optimization under Uncertainty to Reduce the Cost of Energy for Parabolic Trough Solar Power Plants for Different Weather Conditions

Renewable energy use can mitigate the effects of climate change. Solar energy is amongst the cleanest and most readily available renewable energy sources. However, issues of cost and uncertainty associated with solar energy need to be addressed to make it a major source of energy. These uncertainties are different for different locations. In this work, we considered four different locations in the United States of America (Northeast, Northwest, Southeast, Southwest). The weather and cost uncertainties of these locations are included in the formulation, making the problem an optimization-under-uncertainty problem. We used the novel Better Optimization of Nonlinear Uncertain Systems (BONUS) algorithm to solve these problems. The performance and economic models provided by the System Advisory Model (SAM) system from NREL were used for this optimization. Since this is a black-box model, this adds difficulty for optimization and optimization under uncertainty. The objective function and constraints in stochastic optimization (stochastic programming) problems are probabilistic functionals. The generalized treatment of such problems is to use a two-loop computationally intensive procedure, with an inner loop representing probabilistic or stochastic models or scenarios instead of the deterministic model, inside the optimization loop. BONUS circumvents the inner sampling loop, thereby reducing the computational intensity significantly. BONUS can be used for black-box models. The results show that, using the BONUS algorithm, we get 41%–47% of savings on the expected value of the Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE) for Parabolic Trough Solar Power Plants. The expected LCOE in New York is 57.42%, in Jacksonville is 38.52%, and in San Diego is 17.57% more than in Las Vegas. This difference is due to the differences in weather and weather uncertainties at these locations.