and wind energy, currently CSP requires higher capital investments than wind energy, it offers considerable long-term benefits because of minimum fuel costs for backup/hybridization. Moreover, the initial investment costs varies from the small to big plants and decrease with the increase of the project, competition increases, equipment is mass produced, technology improves and the financial community gains confidence in CSP. In the near term, the economics of CSP will remain more favorable for peak and intermediate loads than for base loads, for reasons explained in this section, [34].
4.6.1 Investment Costs
For the CSP power plants with the most technology used is parabolic trough plants, current investment costs are USD 4200/KW to USD 8400/KW depending on many factors like labor and land costs, technologies, the amount and distribution of DNI and, above all, the amount of storage and the size of the solar field. Plants without storage that benefit from excellent DNI are on the low side of the investment cost range; plants with large storage and a higher load factor but at locations with lower DNI (around 2000 kWh/m2/year) are on the high side. These investments costs are slightly higher than those of PV devices, but CSP plants have a greater energy output per MW capacity.
It is expected for the future the decrease of investment cost per watt for larger trough plants, going down by 12% when moving from 50 MW to 100 MW, and by about 20%
when scaling up to 200 MW. Costs associated with power blocks, balance of plant and
costs for parabolic trough plants could fall by 10% to 20% by using DSG, which allows higher working temperatures and better efficiencies. Turbine manufacturers will need to develop effective power blocks for the CSP industry. In total, investment costs have the potential to be reduced by 30% to 40% in the next decade if these proposed action taken, [34].
4.6.2 Operation and maintenance costs
Operation and maintenance costs for CSP include plant operation, fuel expenses in the case of hybridization or backup, feed and cooling water, and field maintenance costs. A typical 50 MW trough plant requires about 30 employees for plant operation and 10 for field maintenance. Operation and maintenance costs have been assessed from USD 13/MWh to USD 30/MWh, including fuel costs for backup. As plants become larger, operation and maintenance costs will decrease, [34].
4.6.3 Costs of providing finance for CSP plants
There is a big difference between the financing schemes of CSP technology from one investment and legal environment to another according to significant consequences for the costs of generating electricity and the expected rates of return on investment. Large utilities building their own plants with available cash do not incur the costs that utilities or investors face when combining equity and loans from various sources to finance plants. Differences among fiscal regimes, in particular with respect to corporate taxes, have an impact on the turnkey costs (the expenditures necessary before a plant is ready for use) depending on how long it takes to secure financing and build the plant. This impact might be significant for CSP plants that may require one to two years of construction. The same parameters will have an even greater impact on the electricity generating costs, as capital expenses are much larger for CSP plants than for, say, fossil-fuel plants, [34].
4.6.4 Generating costs
The actual cost of electricity generated from CSP depends mostly on the available sunlight and how many hours the sun shining. Levelised energy costs, which estimate a plant’s annualized lifetime cost per unit of electricity generation, range from USD 200/MWh to USD 295/MWh for large trough plants, the technology for which figures are most readily available. The impact of storage on generating costs is not as simple as it may seem. The investment cost increase when there is storage capacity, with the size of the solar field and the added storage but so do the capacity factor and the yearly electrical output (e.g. up to 6 600 hours in Spain with 15 hours of storage), thus the energy cost changes only marginally.
In any case, the main merit of storage is not to reduce the cost of electricity but to increase the value of the plant to the utility in making its capacity firm and allowing solar plants to compete with fossil-fuel plants by supplying base-load power in the not-too-distant future, [32].
4.6.5 The expected investment cost of CSP in Egypt
According to the feasibility study which has been prepared to the solar power plant in Kom Ombo with total installed capacity of 100 MW, the total investment cost was 398 Million Euros for the solar only without storage.
And the next table refers to the expected generated electricity from each scenarios of solar only and solar with auxiliary heating and finally solar with storage, we can find the simplest and cheapest one is the solar power plant only without storage, due to the increase in cost with more storage.
The expected investment cost per MW for solar CSP plant is about 933TEGP (124
Plant design 100 MWel
Table 4-6: expected investment cost for CSP projects, PFC Kom Ombo
4.6.6 Parabolic Trough Modeling in Solar Advisor Model (SAM)
4.6.6.1 Overview of SAM
SAM is a performance and economic model designed to facilitate decision making for people involved in the renewable energy industry, ranging from project managers and engineers to incentive program designers, technology developers, and researchers.
SAM makes performance predictions for grid connected solar, small wind, and geothermal power systems and economic estimates for distributed energy and central generation projects. The model calculates the cost of generating electricity based on information you provide about a project's location, installation and
operating costs, type of financing, applicable tax credits and incentives, and system specifications. SAM also calculates the value of saved energy from a domestic solar water heating system.
SAM is based on an hourly simulation engine that interacts with performance, cost, and finance models to calculate energy output, energy costs, and cash flows. The software can also account for the effect of incentives on project cash flows. SAM's spreadsheet interface allows for exchanging data with external models developed in Microsoft® Excel. The model provides options for parametric studies, sensitivity analysis, optimization, and statistical analyses to investigate impacts of variations and uncertainty in performance, cost, and financial parameters on model results.
SAM models system performance using the TRNSYS software developed at the University of Wisconsin combined with customized 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 resource data. TRNSYS is integrated into SAM so there is no need to install TRNSYS software or be familiar with its use to run SAM, [35].
4.6.7 Concentrating Solar Power Plant Model
We can use Solar Advisor Modeling to simulate a solar power plant using parabolic trough technology in Aswan region with a total installed capacity 100 MW solar only without storage.
Figure 4-1: SAM Model Processing
Aswan region is one of the regions has a good potential in solar energy with a direct normal irradiation of 2916.7 KWh/m2/year which will be suitable for a promised solar power plant and can be connected to the Aswan – Luxor grid connection line
The output data or the result of the simulation is
Figure 4-2: result of CSP SAM modeling
The results refer to the approximately similarity between the SAM modeling and the results from the feasibility study in the case of technical data and the Net annual energy produce from the power plant and also in the LCOE, taking in our consideration the change in the location and so the DNI
From the simulation of parabolic trough, it’s found that the LCOE is nearly 21.68 Cent USD /KWh, about 1.19 EGP, which means we can change the FIT according to this amount and so the change will be in IRR, in this case IRR is 15%