Simulation and Control of Solar Thermal Power Plants

Abstract

In this paper, first the overall modeling approach

for an optimized control of a hot-gas cycle for solar thermal

power plants in the Modelica language is pointed out. The

emphasis of the modeling work lies on the development of

dynamic component models to be used in control systems.

Depending on the control task, the discretization of the models

has to be adapted. Main components of the hot-gas cycle are the

solar thermal receiver and the storage system. The steam cycle

is preliminarily only included as heat sink.

Second, for control purposes a linear model-based controller

(MPC) was implemented in Modelica based on an external

state-of-the-art QP solver [2] linked to the Modelica model. The

performance of the MPC is compared with a basic automation

scheme based on classical PID controllers.