Today, thermal energy storage (TES) is a key issue for concentrated solar power plants (CSPs). The available and mature technologies of TES do not mach all the actualised criteria for those properties. Alternative approaches have to be identified and developed to guaranty the expected extension...

Thermal energy storage is very important to eradicate the discrepancy between energy supply and energy demand and to improve the energy efficiency of solar energy systems. Latent heat thermal energy storage (LHTES) is more useful than sensible energy storage due to the high storage capacity per...

This paper presents a detailed review of effect of phase change material (PCM) encapsulation on the performance of a thermal energy storage system (TESS). The key encapsulation parameters, namely, encapsulation size, shell thickness, shell material and encapsulation geometry have been...

This paper presents a parametric analysis for a medium to large size (290–500MWth receiver thermal power) central receiver plant considering the present market trends. The analysis is divided in 4 steps:

This paper provides a methodology to build offering curves for a concentrating solar power plant. This methodology takes into account the uncertainty in the thermal production from the solar field and the volatility of market prices. The solar plant owner is a price-taker producer that...

Thermal energy storage in cooling applications contributes to improvements in overall system efficiency as well as to better energy quality management. Latent heat thermal energy storage (LHTES) is used to provide load shifted thermal energy at small temperature swing with high storage density,...

A thermodynamic model was developed to predict transient behavior of a thermal storage system, using phase change materials (PCMs), for a novel electric vehicle climate conditioning application. The main objectives of the paper are to consider the system’s dynamic behavior, such as a dynamic...

Latent thermal energy storage (TES) systems have shown growing potential in matching the production to the demand in Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) systems. Indeed, the improved storage density and the constant temperature release of energy allow for more compact heat exchanger design and...

This paper describes an approach to the formulation of a model-based predictive control (MPC) algorithm for the cooling plant of a building under a time-dependent electricity price profile. The mechanical system includes a three-stage chiller and an ice bank used for thermal energy storage...

Storing sun’s energy in the form of latent thermal energy of a phase change material (PCM) offers high volumetric energy storage density resulting in low capital cost. The objective of this paper is to analyze the dynamic behavior of a packed bed thermal energy storage system with encapsulated...