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Hybrid Solar Thermal Energy System for District Heating Application

Conference ·
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Solar district heating (SDH) systems can be good alternatives to conventional systems when they are optimized with hybrid configurations and thermal energy storage (TES). In this scope, a hybrid renewable thermal energy system (RTES) model has been built combining flat plate collector (FPC) solar system with parabolic trough collector (PTC) system via a heat exchanger and coupled with TES. To undertake the hybridization of the system, System Advisor Model (SAM) software was modified, which allowed control over configurations and more accurate modelling of heat transfer between the collectors. The model is first compared to an existing hybrid solar district heating systems (DHS) system in Taars, Denmark. The results showed a good correlation with an overestimation of only 6.4% compared to most recent heat output. Then the same system configuration was modeled in different geographic locations to investigate the impact of changes in direct normal irradiance (DNI) to the heat sink thermal output of the hybrid system. The results showed that the annual net thermal power output in California, USA can be three times more than the annual net thermal power output in Taars, Denmark. Finally, multiple hybrid configurations with varying solar field sizes were simulated based on the heat demand of two different university campuses DHS. The results showed that, retrofit applications of this hybrid DHS system coupled with TES could reduce the natural gas consumption of the existing systems between 25% and 41%. The use of hybrid RTES highlighted in this paper can be extended to many more opportunities.
Research Organization:
National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Strategic Analysis Team; USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Advanced Manufacturing Office
DOE Contract Number:
AC36-08GO28308
OSTI ID:
2332956
Report Number(s):
NREL/CP-7A40-83445; MainId:84218; UUID:93cf35ba-a5ad-4a1b-97b8-342c657c5a0d; MainAdminId:72264
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

References (6)

System Advisor Model (SAM) General Description (Version 2017.9.5) report May 2018
Strategies for a transition towards a solar district heating grid with integrated seasonal geothermal energy storage journal August 2021
Optimizing Cornell’s future geothermal district heating performance through systems engineering and simulation journal January 2021
The solar heating system with seasonal storage at the Solar-Campus Jülich journal January 2000
Annual measured and simulated thermal performance analysis of a hybrid solar district heating plant with flat plate collectors and parabolic trough collectors in series journal November 2017
Testing, Development and Demonstration of Large Scale Solar District Heating Systems journal May 2015

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Related Subjects

ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATION,SOLAR ENERGY
district heating
hybrid systems
solar thermal
thermal energy storage