Sensitivity Analysis of the Levelized Cost of Electricity for a Particle-Based Concentrating Solar Power System

Abstract

This study presents a sensitivity analysis of the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) for a particle-based system with the costs of the most current components. New models for the primary heat exchanger, thermal energy storage, and tower are presented and used to establish lower and upper bounds for these three components. The rest of component costs such as particle cost, cavity cost, and lift cost are set to lower and upper bounds estimating an uncertainty between 25% and 50%. Other relevant parameters related to lift and storage performance are also included in the analysis with the same uncertainty. This study also includes an upgrade to the receiver model by including the wind effect in the efficiency, which was not included in previous publications and may have a big impact in the system design. A parametric analysis shows the optimum values of solar multiple, storage hours, tower height, and concentration ratio, and a probabilistic analysis provides a cumulative distribution function for a range of LCOE values. The results show that the LCOE could be below $0.06/kWh with a probability of between 80% and 90%, where the costs of primary heat exchanger, particles, and lifts have largest contribution to the variance of the LCOE.