Technical-economic analysis of an innovative small scale solar thermal - ORC co-generative system

The generation of electricity from solar thermal source has continued to garner more attention due to the very attractive environmental performance, the applicability to small distributed users and as alternative to the fossil fuels power generation. Indeed, solar thermal energy, through the coupling with ORC systems, becomes fit for electric power generation as well and, with a proper thermal storage, can deliver more equivalent hours than other residential systems. The paper analyses, by means of system modelling simulation, a small solar power plant composed by a CPC heat pipe solar collector device feeding a thermal storage, an ORC and an absorber unit. Beside the analysis of configuration and design, this paper proposes an economic analysis taking into consideration the applicable incentive. The evaluation highlights the economic viability of the proposed system and tries to define a roadmap to optimize results consisting in acceptable PBT and positive NPV.