Novel solar tower structure to lower plant cost and construction risk

Abstract

In recent times the interest in solar tower power plants is increasing with various plants being built in the last years and currently under construction, e.g. Ivanpah and Crescent Dunes in the US and Khi Solar One in South Africa. The higher cycle efficiency leads to lower levelised cost of electricity. However, further cost reductions are required and this paper compares a novel and patented solar tower structure with a conventional concrete tower. The novel solar tower design is cable-stayed which has the benefit that the cables absorb a large part of the wind and buckling loads. A tower that has to cope with fewer wind and buckling forces can have a significantly smaller diameter than a concrete tower, which enables workshop manufacture, sea and road transport, and rapid on-site installation. The case study provided in this paper finds that the tower area affected by wind can be reduced by up to 45%, installation time shortened by up to 66%, and tower cost by 20-40%. The novel design allows the constr...

Original document

The different versions of the original document can be found in:

• http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4949172

• https://aip.scitation.org/doi/pdf/10.1063/1.4949172

• https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2016AIPC.1734g0025P/abstract,

https://aip.scitation.org/doi/abs/10.1063/1.4949172,

https://academic.microsoft.com/#/detail/2468543405