Weather Forecasting and Dispatch Requirements for Predictable and Flexible Molten Salt CSP plants of the Future

Abstract

Recent commercial projects for large scale CSP plants are on their way to ever lower tariffs than even those projected by IEA (Fig. 1). In order to accelerate the adoption of CSP to achieve grid parity, the PreFlexMS project aims to demonstrate relevant hardware and software innovations that would raise the competitiveness of the CSP plants of the future, by making them predictable and flexible in terms of dispatch requirements such that they can compete head-to-head as an energy source against any comparable large scale fossil-fuel plants like combined cycle gas turbines without special economic incentives.