Parabolic Trough Steam Booster Heater

Dear Vahan,

No, the Hourly Factors on the Performance Adjustment page must be between 0 and 1. If you assign a value greater than 1, SAM automatically changes the value to 1.

You can assign a value to the "Percent of annual output" that is greater than 100%.

Would you mind explaining why you want to use adjustment factors greater than 1? We are making some changes to those inputs for the next version now, so perhaps we could make that possible if there is a good reason for it.

Best regards,
Paul.

Dear Paul,
I found that Hourly Factors are the best way to account for the fossil fuel steam booster heater in parabolic trough plants. For instance I calculated that for the plant that I am modeling the input of booster heater in electricity generation is 45% (booster only increases the temp. of steam from 380 to 540 C subsequently turbine generates 45% more electric energy), so if I use Hourly Factors and adjust power output to 145% I can mimic the presence of booster heater without actually modeling it. Moreover Hourly Factors give opportunity to adjust power output by months and day hours so it is very convenient in case if the input of the booster heater is variable.
With “Percent of annual output”, even though I can input values more than 100%, those results cannot be achieved.
Thus, giving Hourly Factors values greater than 1 will be very useful feature and will increase flexibility of the software.

Best Regards,
Vahan

Dear Paul,
So are you going to include that feature and when the new version will be available?

Best Regards,
Vahan

And one more question when I give Turbine Output Fraction value of 2, that's mean I double the thermal input to turbine? or it means something else? because when I give value of 2 to Turbine Output Fraction and allocate that period to all Weekday and Weekend Schedules, results are the same as for Turbine Output Fraction of 1.

Best Regards,
Vahan

Dear Vahan,

The Turbine Output Fraction on the parabolic trough's Thermal Storage page is a multiple of the thermal input to the turbine. When you change its value, you should see a small change in the system's total annual output.

The multiplier does not change the power cycle's capacity, so I would not expect to see a large change in the system's output. Also, when you change the TES dispatch multipliers, you may want to re-optimize the solar multiple and TES storage capacity values.

Best regards,
Paul.

Dear Paul,

In parabolic trough physical how does "Loop optical Efficiency" is calculated?
In SAM help it is written "Loop optical Efficiency = Aggregate SCA Efficiency * Aggregate Receiver Optical Efficiency"
but what does "Aggregate" means here?

Best Regards
Vahan