Design and Simulation of Molten Salt Based Solar Thermal Power Plant using LFR Technology in Pakistan

Pakistan being an underdeveloped country is facing several problems. One of the most important problems of the country has been Energy crises. Pakistan has very rich resources of renewable energy which are yet to be utilized. Among these renewable energy resources, energy from sun is one of the most abundant one. Concentrated Solar power CSP is considered to be the best technology to generate electricity for solar energy. Design of a CSP plant with a capacity of 100 MW using Linear Fresnel Reflectors and integrated with thermal energy storage of six hour is proposed in this paper. A location near Nawabshah receiving direct normal irradiance (DNI) of 1955 KWh/m(2)/year is selected on the basis of CSP plant requirements. System advisor model (SAM) selected for carrying out the simulation of the proposed plant for one year. Heat transfer fluid is molten salt known as Hitec solar Salt instead of using synthetic oil. From simulation results it was found that the plant can generate 220,734,832 kWh (220.735 GWh) of electricity annually. The capacity factor and gross to net conversion were found to be 25.2% and 90% respectively. These results obtained are encouraging and justify that a plant based on the proposed model is thermodynamically feasible in Pakistani environment.