Solar Energy Autopilot: A Holistic Architecture for Autonomous Solar Thermal Plants and its Evaluation in an Operational Power Tower Facility

Kurzfassung

Concentrated solar thermal (CST) plants can provide dispatchable renewable energy through high-temperature heat and integrated thermal storage, but their commercial deployment is hampered by high operational complexity and associated costs. Increasing the degree of system autonomy is a promising strategy to manage this complexity, reduce operating costs, and improve plant efficiency. However, most existing work still focuses on isolated automation tasks such as heliostat calibration, flux measurement, or plant maintenance rather than plant-wide automation concepts. In addition, there is little empirical evidence from operational CST facilities on the benefits that increased system autonomy can bring to the CST domain. This contribution addresses both gaps by presenting the Solar Energy Autopilot (SOLEA), a novel holistic four-layer architecture for autonomous CST plant operation that has been implemented and evaluated under realistic conditions at the solar tower Jülich (STJ) facility.