Renewable Energy 49 (2013) 278e281

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Renewable Energy
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/renene

Solar thermoelectric power generation in Cyprus: Selection of the best system

Soteris A. Kalogirou
Cyprus University of Technology, Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Sciences and Engineering, P.O. Box 50329, Limassol 3603, Cyprus

a r t i c l e i n f o

a b s t r a c t

Article history:
Available online 8 February 2012

Cyprus is planning to develop in the next few years one solar thermal power plant with a capacity of
about 50 MW. Therefore, in this paper solar power systems are analyzed with respect to their technical
characteristics, the cost of electricity produced and the land area required. The latter is very important for
Cyprus as seaside areas are very expensive. Such a solar power station however should be located near
the sea close to an existing power station. An additional reason is that such a solar plant can be combined
with solar desalination to produce fresh water from seawater which is also a precious commodity for
Cyprus. Based mainly on their industrial maturity and the advantages mentioned in this paper, the
parabolic trough system seems to be to best one to apply. From a preliminary investigation of the various
possible areas the author believes that the Vasilikos area near to the existing Vasilikos power station is
the most suitable for such a system to be installed.
2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords:
Parabolic trough collector
Central receiver system
Parabolic dish
Thermal storage

1. Introduction
Cyprus does not have at the moment any sources of energy and
depends exclusively on imported oil for its energy needs. The only
inexhaustible natural source of energy that Cyprus posses abundantly, is solar energy. It is well known that other forms of
renewable energy, like the wind energy, wave energy and biomass
have limited potential in Cyprus. Solar energy can be converted
directly to electrical energy using photovoltaic panels or to thermal
energy using a large variety of thermal solar collectors. Cyprus
Government decided to erect a solar thermoelectric power generation station with a capacity of about 50 MW, which is a very
correct movement since the development of large-scale photovoltaic parks would be a very expensive solution. The characteristics
that need to be considered when selecting the right type of thermoelectric system are the cost of electricity produced and the land
area that would be required to install the solar plant. The latter is
very important as Cyprus has no desert land near the sea but on the
contrary seaside areas are very expensive as they are used for
touristic development. It should be noted that all existing power
stations are located near the sea so the solar power station should
also be located near to one of those stations to have ease access to
the grid and for the use of the seawater for the condenser.
Concentrating solar power plants, use mirrors to generate high
temperature heat that drives steam turbines traditionally powered
from conventional fossil fuels. Some of these systems incorporate

E-mail address: soteris.kalogirou@cut.ac.cy.

0960-1481/$ e see front matter 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.renene.2012.01.014

also heat storage which allows them to operate during cloudy

weather and night-time. The main systems that are operational
today in various countries at experimental or full industrial scale
are the parabolic trough collector (PTC) system, the central receiver
or power tower system and the parabolic dishes. More details about
these systems can be found in [1].
2. Parabolic trough collector systems
From the technologies available the most industrially matured is
the parabolic trough system. This is due to the systems installed
and operating in California, USA since 1985, which have a total
installed capacity equal to 354 MWe. Mainly due to the plants
operating in California for more than 20 years, parabolic trough is
the most proven technology and today they produce electricity at
about US$ 0.10/kWh. The success and durability of these plants has
demonstrated the robustness and reliability of the parabolic trough
technology. An interesting feature of parabolic troughs and power
tower systems is that it is possible to store heat, which enables
them to continue producing electricity during the night or cloudy
days. For this purpose, concrete, molten salts, ceramics or phasechange media can be used and this method is currently much
cheaper than storing electricity in batteries. The parabolic trough
systems produce superheated steam which is used to drive the
turbines of a conventional Rankine type power station or an Integrated Solar Combined Cycle System, i.e., they replace the
conventional steam boiler with the solar collection system.
Compared to other technologies, this system has a high solar-toelectrical efciency and low area per MWh requirement.

S.A. Kalogirou / Renewable Energy 49 (2013) 278e281

Parabolic trough collectors are the most mature solar technology

to generate heat at temperatures up to 400
C for solar thermal
electricity generation or process heat applications. This is mainly
due to the nine large plants installed and operating in California,
USA, which is the biggest application of this type of system. The nine
Southern California power plants are known as Solar Electric
Generating Systems (SEGS) [2]. Details for these plants are given in
Table 1 [3]. SEGS I is 13.8 MWe, SEGS IIeVII are 30 MWe each and
SEGS VIII and IX are 80 MWe each. These have been designed,
installed and operated in the Mojave Desert of Southern California,
the rst one since 1985 and the last one since 1991. These plants are
based on large parabolic trough concentrators providing steam to
Rankine power plants. They generate peaking power which is sold
to the Southern California Edison utility.
Parabolic trough technology proved to be tough, dependable
and proven. Today the second-generation parabolic troughs have
more precise mirror curvature and alignment, which enables them
to have higher efciency than the rst plants erected in California.
Other improvements include the use of a small mirror on the
backside of the receiver to capture and reect any scattered sun
rays back onto the receiver, the direct steam generation into the
receiver tube to simplify the energy conversion and reduce heat
losses, and the use of more advanced materials for the reectors
and selective coatings of the receiver.
3. Power tower systems
Power towers or central receiver systems use thousands of individual sun-tracking mirrors called "heliostats" to reect solar energy
onto a receiver located on top of a tall tower. The receiver collects the
suns heat in a heat-transfer uid (molten salt) that ows through the
receiver. This is then passed optionally to storage and nally to
a power-conversion system which converts the thermal energy into
electricity and supply it to the grid. Therefore, a central receiver
system is composed of ve main components: heliostats, including
their tracking system, receiver, heat transport and exchange, thermal
storage and controls. In many solar power studies it has been
observed that the collector represents the largest cost in the system,
therefore, an efcient engine is justied to obtain maximum useful
conversion of the collected energy. The power tower plants are quite
large, generally 10 MWe or more, while the optimum sizes lie
between 50 and 400 MW. It is estimated that power towers could
generate electricity at around US$ 0.04/kWh by 2020 [4].
The heliostats reect solar radiation to the receiver at the
desired ux density at minimum cost. A variety of receiver shapes
has been considered, including cylindrical receivers and cavity
receivers. The optimum shape of the receiver is a function of
radiation intercepted and absorbed, thermal losses, cost and design
of the heliostat eld. For a large heliostat eld a cylindrical receiver
is best suited to be used with Rankine cycle engines. Another
possibility is to use Brayton cycle turbines which require higher
temperatures (of about 1000
C) for their operation and in this case

279

cavity receivers with larger tower height to heliostat eld area

ratios are more suitable. For gas turbine operation, the air to be
heated must pass through a pressurized receiver with a solar
window. Combined cycle power plants using this method could
require 30% less collector area than the equivalent steam cycles.
Brayton cycle engines provide high engine efciencies but are
limited by the fact that a cavity receiver is required, which reduces
the numbers of heliostats that can be used. Rankine cycle engines
driven from steam generated in the receiver and operated at
500e550
C, have two important advantages over the Brayton
cycle. The rst is that the heat-transfer coefcients in the steam
generator are high, allowing the use of high energy densities and
smaller receivers. The second is that they employ cylindrical
receivers which permit larger heliostat elds to be used.
The rst large-scale, demonstration solar power tower was
built-in the early 80s in the desert near Barstow, California, called
the Solar One. The plant operated successfully from 1982 to 1988,
and the system had the capacity to produce 10 MW of power. This
plant used water/steam as the heat-transfer uid in the receiver,
which presented several problems in terms of storage and continuous turbine operation.
These problems were addressed by Solar Two, which is an
upgrade of Solar One. Solar Two operated from 1996 to 1999. Solar
Two demonstrated how solar energy can be stored efciently and
economically as heat in tanks of molten salt so that power can be
produced even when the sun isnt shining. Solar Two plant, used
nitrate salt (molten salt) as both the heat-transfer uid in the
receiver and the heat storage media. In this plant, the molten
nitrate salt at 290
C is pumped from a cold storage tank through
the receiver where it is heated to approximately 565
C and then
travelled to a storage tank, which had a capacity of 3 h of storage.
When power is needed from the plant, the hot salt is pumped to
a generator that produces steam. The steam activates a turbine/
generator system that creates electricity. From the steam generator,
the salt is returned to the cold storage tank, where it is stored and
can be eventually reheated in the receiver. By using thermal
storage, power tower plants can potentially operate for 65% of the
year without the need for a backup fuel source. Without energy
storage, solar technologies like the parabolic trough plants are
limited to annual capacity factors near 25 percent.
4. Dish systems
Dish systems use dish-shaped parabolic mirrors as reectors to
concentrate and focus the suns rays onto a receiver, which is
mounted above the dish at the dish focal point. The receiver
absorbs the energy and converts it into thermal energy. This can be
used directly as heat or can support chemical processes, but its
most common application is in power generation. The thermal
energy can either be transported to a central generator for
conversion, or it can be converted directly into electricity at a local
generator coupled to the receiver.

Table 1
Characteristics of SEGS plants.
SEGS plant

Year of
operation

Net output
(MWe)

Solar outlet temp.

(
C)

Type of Luz
collector used

Solar eld area

(m2)

Solar turbine efciency

(%)

Fossil turbine efciency

(%)

Annual output
(MWh)

I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX

1985
1986
1987
1987
1988
1989
1989
1990
1991

13.8
30
30
30
30
30
30
80
80

307
316
349
349
349
390
390
390
390

LS-1
LS-2
LS-2
LS-2
LS-2
LS-2
LS-2 LS-3
LS-3
LS-3

82,960
190,338
230,300
230,300
250,500
188,000
194,280
464,340
483,960

31.5
29.4
30.6
30.6
30.6
37.5
37.5
37.6
37.6

e
37.3
37.4
37.4
37.4
39.5
39.5
37.6
37.6

30,100
80,500
92,780
92,780
91,820
90,850
92,646
252,750
256,125

280

S.A. Kalogirou / Renewable Energy 49 (2013) 278e281

A dish/engine system is a stand-alone unit composed primarily

of a collector, a receiver and an engine. It works by collecting and
concentrating the suns energy with a dish-shaped surface onto
a receiver that absorbs the energy and transfers it to the engine. The
heat is then converted in the engine to mechanical power, in
a manner similar to conventional engines, by compressing the
working uid when it is cold, heating the compressed working uid
and then expanding it through a turbine or with a piston to produce
mechanical power. An electric generator converts the mechanical
power into electrical power.
Dish/engine systems use dual-axis tracking system to follow the
sun and thus are the most efcient collector systems because they
are always pointing at the sun. Concentration ratios usually range
from 600 to 2000, and they can achieve temperatures in excess of
1500
C. While Rankine cycle engines, Brayton cycle engines, and
sodium-heat engines have all been considered for systems using
dish-mounted engines, greatest attention has been paid to Stirling
engine systems [5,6].
5. Selection of the best system
Table 2 gives an overview of some of the performance characteristics of the different concentrating solar power concepts
considered in this paper [7]. Parabolic troughs and power towers
can be coupled to steam cycles of 10e200 MW of electric capacity,
with thermal cycle efciencies of 30e40%. The same efciency
range applies for Stirling engines coupled to dish systems.
The conversion efciency of the power block remains essentially
the same as in fuel red power plants. Overall solareelectric efciencies, dened as the net power generation over incident beam
radiation, are lower than the conversion efciencies of conventional steam or combined cycles, as they include the conversion of
solar radiative energy to heat within the collector and the conversion of the heat to electricity in the power block.
Due to the higher levels of concentration, dish systems usually
achieve higher efciencies than the parabolic trough system and
are more suitable for stand-alone, small power producing systems;
however for higher outputs many dish systems could be used.
All the three systems analysed in this paper can be operated
with fossil fuel (usually natural gas) so as to operate at low irradiation hours and during the night. From the three systems the only
one which does not offer the possibility of storage is the parabolic
dish, which is an important disadvantage, since it can operate only
during the sunshine periods and with conventional fuel. Therefore
for Cyprus, the selection needs to be done between the parabolic
trough and the central receiver systems. The former, has a high
solar-to-electrical efciency and low area per MWh requirement,
while the latter has the capability of producing energy at very low
cost although its efciency is a little lower and the land requirement per MWh is higher.
Both systems need at areas to be developed whereas the
parabolic trough system can be installed in areas with step-wise
ground. Mainly due to the matured technology that is using and
the other advantages that were analyzed above, the author believes
that the best system for Cyprus is the parabolic trough one.
All existing power stations on the island are located near the sea.
Such a solar power station should also be located near the sea close

to an existing power station to have ease access to the grid and for
the use of the seawater for the condenser. The erection of such
a station inland is not possible due to the lack of water required for
the condensation of the steam. This is because Cyprus suffers from
a water shortage problem, so it has no adequate water supply
inland and the proximity of the solar to an existing station means it
will also be close to existing power lines and maintenance
personnel from the station. Moreover, the location of the solar plant
near the sea will enable it to be combined with solar desalination,
for the production of fresh water which is also a required
commodity for the island.
From a preliminary investigation of the various possible areas
the author believes that the Vasilikos area near to the existing
Vasilikos power station is the most suitable for such a system to be
installed. The main reasons are; this is the largest power station on
the island, its proximity to the sea and the power grid and the fact
that this is the area where the Energy Center will be installed,
which will be the terminal for the natural gas, which can also be
used as the auxiliary fuel for the solar system. Another important
reason is the visibility of the system from the Nicosia-Limassol
motorway, which will be an ideal advertisement for the use of
solar energy to the public.
6. System simulation
TRNSYS program [8] consists of many subroutines that model
subsystem components. TRNSYS is a validated time series simulation program that can simulate the performance of photovoltaic,
concentrating solar power, water heating systems and other
renewable energy systems using hourly data. Here, the feasibility of
using thermal energy storage (TES) in parabolic trough solar
collector plants is investigated. This is done through modelling and
simulation. The model run in TRNSYS using the Solar Thermal
Electric Components (STEC) model library and set-up using the
Solar Advisor Model (SAM) developed by NREL for the US DOE.
The Solar Advisor Model (SAM) provides a consistent framework
for analyzing and comparing power system costs and performance
across the range of solar technologies and markets, from photovoltaic systems for residential and commercial markets to
concentrating solar power and large photovoltaic systems for
utility markets [9]. SAM combines an hourly simulation model with
performance, cost and nance models to calculate energy output,
energy costs and cash ows. The software can also account for the
effect of incentives on cash ows. SAM includes both built-in cost
and performance models, and a spreadsheet interface for
exchanging data with external model developed in Microsoft Excel.
Most of the SAMs inputs can be used as parametric variables for
sensitivity studies to investigate the impact of variations in
performance, cost and nancial parameters on model results. SAM
models system performance using TRNSYS software combined
with customized components from the Solar Thermal Electric
Components (STEC) model library. In fact TRNSYS is integrated into
SAM so there is no need to install TRNSYS software or be familiar
with its use to run SAM.
The collectors investigated are the Eurotrough and Luz-LS3
equipped with a two-tank or thermocline storage units. Four
cases were investigated for each collector and storage systems with

Table 2
Performance characteristics of various CSP technologies.
Technology

Capacity range (MW)

Concentration

Peak solar efciency (%)

Solareelectric efciency (%)

Land use (m2/MWh y)

Parabolic trough
Power tower
Dish-Stirling

10e200
10e150
0.01e0.4

70e80
300e1000
1000e3000

21
20
29

10e15
8e10
16e18

6e8
8e12
8e12

S.A. Kalogirou / Renewable Energy 49 (2013) 278e281

Table 3
Total heat loss from storage tanks.
Storage hours

Two-tank system
(MWt)

Thermocline system
(MWt)

0
2
4
6

0
0.32
0.64
0.96

0
0.17
0.34
0.51

Eurotrough

Luz-LS3

5.75
817.5
150
2.1
0.752

5.75
545
100
2.1
0.714

Aperture (m)
Area (m2)
Length (m)
Focal length (m)
Optical efciency
Results
Storage time (hours)
LCOE [2-tank]
(cents/kWh)
LCOE [thermo]
(cents/kWh)
NEG [2-tank] (GWh)
NEG [thermo] (GWh)

possible to increase the number of operating hours of the system

and allow the solar system to produce more electricity, indicated by
net electricity generated (NEG) in Table 4. The optimum storage size
is for 4 h storage.
7. Conclusions

Table 4
Collector characteristics and model simulation results.
Parameter

281

16.89 16.70 17.36 18.32 17.83 17.60 19.26 19.23

16.89 16.65 17.23 18.08 17.83 17.53 18.14 19.01
107.7 115.0 116.4 115.9 105.9 113.0 114.3 113.9
107.7 115.4 117.3 117.3 105.9 113.4 115.2 115.2

0, 2, 4 and 6 h storage respectively. The various systems are

simulated using the weather conditions of Larnaca, Cyprus. This
represents a typical seaside weather environment given in the form
of a Typical Meteorological Year.
A thermal energy storage system store heat from the solar eld,
which can be used to drive the power block turbine during periods
of low or no sunlight. This is very benecial in cases where the peak
demand occurs after the sun has set. The heat lost from the storage
tank depends on the type of the storage tank and its size. The size
depends on the hours of storage considered. The total heat loss
from the two types of storage tanks considered in this work is
shown in Table 3.
The storage uid considered is molten salt. The collector area
required for the two types of collectors considered is 433,275 m2 for
the Eurotrough and 458,890 m2 for the Luz-LS3. The difference in
area is due to the different characteristics of the collectors
considered shown in Table 4 and this area is required to satisfy the
50 MW base load. No backup is considered so as to show the actual
capability of the systems. Both collectors are considered to be tted
with Schott PTR70 vacuum tube receiver which has a heat loss of
266.36 W/m (50.557 W/m2). The solar eld piping losses are equal
to 10.1 W/m2 and the collectors are installed in an EeW horizontal
mode with NeS tracking.
From the results of this analysis, shown in Table 4, thermal
storage in parabolic trough systems is viable, giving higher levelized cost of energy (LCOE) and should be employed whenever

The most promising system from the point of view of cost of

the produced electricity is the central receiver system while the
parabolic dishes have the advantage that they can be exploited in
steps as each system produces about 25 kW of electricity with
a Stirling engine installed on each unit. The parabolic trough and
the central receiver systems produce superheated steam which is
used to drive the turbines of the common Rankine or of an integrated combined cycle. All three systems can be supplied with
conventional fuel (usually natural gas) so as to operate during
hours of low irradiation and during night-time while the only
system which does not offer the option of storage of thermal
energy is the parabolic dish. Because of their maturity, which can
reduce economic risks, it is believed by the author that the best
system to apply is the parabolic trough one. Additionally, this
system offers a high solar-to-electrical efciency and low area per
MWh requirement. For the reasons explained above such a solar
plant need to be located near the sea. In such a case the solar plant
can be combined with solar desalination to produce fresh water
from seawater which is also a precious commodity for Cyprus.
From a preliminary investigation of the various possible areas, the
Vasilikos area near to the existing Vasilikos power station, is the
most suitable for such a system to be installed. This is also the area
where the Energy Center will be installed, which will be the
terminal for the natural gas, which can also be used as the auxiliary fuel for the solar system. A system with 4 h of storage is the
optimum for Cyprus.
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