System Control - Tower (salt)

Good morning to the whole community, I am new to using this software, and I would like to ask a question, please. What is the difference between using TOD factors and the turbine output fraction (dispatch control)?

I want to simulate a hybrid plant (PV + CSP), so I first simulate a PV plant and in hours when this plant does not produce energy, I want the CSP plant to dispatch energy. How can I regulate this?
Thanks for your help,

Greetings,
Francisco

Hi Francisco,

The TOD (Time of Delivery) factors are inputs on the Revenue page that modify the PPA price based on the TOD period, TOD factor, and TOD weekday and weekend schedules.

The dispatch control periods, turbine output fractions, and schedules on the System Control page determine how SAM operates the power plant. For example, if you only want the plant to deliver power at night, you could create two dispatch periods: One for daytime hours and one for nighttime hours. You would then set the turbine output fraction for the daytime period to zero and for the nighttime period to a value greater than zero and up to 1 (or perhaps up to 1.1 or higher if the plant can safely operate above its rated capacity).

If you want to match the power plant output to a TOD schedule, you can use the "Copy schedule from TOD Factors page" button to copy the PPA price TOD weekday and weekend schedules to the dispatch schedules.

In your case, it is not possible to dispatch the power plant to an hourly or subhourly time series profile, so it is not possible to dispatch the plant in response to the output of a PV system. You could create a dispatch schedule to only allow the plant to produce power during the daytime to get an idea of how well it would complement the PV system's generation profile.

Best regards,
Paul.