PROJECT TITLE :

Maximising revenue via optimal control of a concentrating solar thermal power plant with limited storage capacity

ABSTRACT:

Concentrating solar thermal power plants with thermal energy storage could be a potential supply of fresh electrical power. This work has the same four optimal management modes established during a previous paper where Pontryagin's principle demonstrated that to maximise revenue from a plant with unlimited storage the optimal modes were to: (i) store all collected power, while not generating; (ii) generate using collected power solely; (iii) generate at maximum capability using each collected and stored power; (iv) generate a maximum capacity, storing any surplus power. This paper presents an expanded analysis to cover a more realistic case where there's limited storage capability, introducing 2 variations. Initial, it's sometimes necessary to discard power if the shop is full. Second, the critical prices used to determine the optimal management can amendment whenever the store becomes full or empty. Again we tend to use Pontragin's principle to derive necessary conditions for an optimal management and gift an algorithm to search out the sequence of critical costs needed to construct it. The analysis provides more insight into the nature of the optimal management than mathematical programming or probabilistic search techniques, and the calculation is fast-finding the optimal management for a yearlong operation in concerning 30 seconds.