Hybridization of solar power plants with biogas from anaerobic digestion: A modeled case study

This work shows the numerical simulation of a hybrid renewable power plant composed of a Concentrated Solar Plant (CSP) with molten salt storage sub-system, a Rankine steam cycle power plant and a biomass anaerobic digester. Biogas produced by the digester is used as fuel in the boiler of the steam cycle coupled with methane. "Greenius" software has been used to simulate the CSP system aimed to satisfy an electrical power demand of the city Messaad, Algeria. Results concerning electrical energy produced, biogas and methane consumption was used with CAPEX and OPEX costs of the plant to calculate the Levelized Cost of the Electrical energy produced (LCoE). Several simulation were done varying the size of the solar field and of the thermal storage in order to find the compromise configuration with an high renewable energy production, a low methane consumption and a low LCOE. Simulations show that the CSP configuration with 2.07 of Solar Multiple (SM) and 9 of Full Load Hour (FLH) result in a low LCOE value (97.32 €/MWh), high annual system efficiency (11.51%), low methane share (8.73%) and low dumped heat ratio (10.22%).