Abstract

Electricity demand from mining industry in Chile will increase up to 34 % in the next 10 years. The Antofagasta region has several mining operations and gas pipelines, in addition to being an area with very high solar resource availability. This study focuses on reviewing hybridization alternatives for combined cycle plants with concentrating solar generation technologies. In this work a techno-economic analysis of two alternative small scale hybridized solar-combined cycle technologies is developed, a solarized combined cycle with STP and a solarized combined cycle with PTC. To perform the solar concentration systems simulations, TRNSYS software was used for PTC, and Solstice software for STP system, while the thermodynamic simulation for the combined cycle system was developed using EES software. The LCOE was calculated for all plants considering a fuel cost of 66 USD/MWh. LCOE obtained for combined cycle is 202 USD/MWh, while LCOE for combined cycle with STP integration is 149 USD/MWh, and LCOE for combined cycle with PTC integration is 197 USD/MWh. The lowest LCOE is achieved with the STP integration, since part of the fuel that feeds the combined cycle is replaced by solar energy, avoiding the emission of 16,603 tons of CO2.