Control strategy for energy storage involving a solar concentrator with

Stirling engine, wind turbines and photovoltaic cells

Alexandru Ciocan, Mihai Balan, Alexandru Rizoiu

Engineers, PhD Candidates, Scientific Researchers
National R&D Institute for Cryogenics and Isotopic Technologies – ICIT Ramnicu Valcea, Romania
alexandru.ciocan@icsi.ro

1. Introduction
 Solar power has presently one of the fastest growing type of the electricity generation worldwide together
with wind turbines. Both are attractive renewable energy sources being inexhaustible and environmentally
friendly. Using renewable energy sources at a larger scale lead to the accomplishment of targets assumed by
international community looking at reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

2. Proposed Configuration
The present work proposes a small scale storage energy system for the energy provided by renewable sources
throughout a wind turbine, several photovoltaic panels and a solar concentrator equipped with a Stirling
engine. Dish Stirling engine together with the management of the stored energy represent the main point of
this work.
It is well known the principle on which Dish Stirling engine and the fact that when is operating provides
energy in cogeneration. The studied equipment has the capabilities to produce from 2-10 kWe and 25 kWth.
The obtained energy follows to be stored in Li-Ion battery with a capacity of 10kWh if we talk about
electricity, and in the form of hot water talking about thermal energy. Speaking about other storage solutions
instead of batteries like storage energy in the form of compressed air, could be used for thermal energy
storage other materials with higher boiling point than water as: molten salts, different oils or phase change
materials. Anyway at this point of time in this work hot water has been chosen as thermal energy storage
solution used especially for domestic water and heating buildings

Fig. 1: Schematic diagram of a hybrid energy storage system consisting in Li-Ion batteries and thermal
energy storage in the form of hot water
Concentrating solar power systems of this type are designed for combined production of electrical and heat
energy, like CHP units. Parabolic concentrator with mirrors surface reflects direct solar radiation to the focal
point where is placed the power conversion unit, the main part of this being Stirling engine. Through the
solar dish the temperature of the solar radiation reach in the focal point values in the range of 650 – 700
Celsius degree.
The heat given by the solar dish has the following expression:

qs  IAappG  Arec  h TH  T0   û TH4  T04 

- where 𝑞𝑠 is the heat given by the dish collector, I is the solar radiation, Aapp, Arec are the absorber and
receiver aperture area ηG is the collector efficiency, h is the conduction/ convection heat transfer coefficient
in the solar dish, TH and T0 are the absorber and ambient temperatures, ü is the emissivity factor of the
collector and δ is the Boltzmann constant.

3. Discussions
The goal of this work is to develop an application capable to decide at any moment of time what kind of
energy to store. By manipulation of solar concentrator it may be decided if the system will store electrical
and thermal energy in cogeneration or only thermal energy, moment at which the Stirling engine is removed
from the focal point and replaced with a heat exchanger. This thing comes in order to cover the consumer’s
needs from two points of view electrical and thermic and with the objective to minimize the cost of energy
storage.
As could be easily seen in figure 1 the entire system has been thought to be used in on-grid applications so
depending on the differential electricity rate the energy can be stored in batteries or can be delivered to the
grid in the on-peak periods and taken from the grid during off-peak periods.

4. References
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Management,75 (2013) 366-373
[2] Abdollahpour A, Ahmadi M, Mohammadi A, Energy Conversion and Management, 79 (2014) 666-673
[3] Jian Y, Bai F, Falcoz Q, Wang Z, Energy Procedia 69 (2015) 891-899
[4] Vignarooban K, Xu X, Arvay A, Hsu K, Kannan A.M, Applied Energy 146 (2015) 383-396
[5] Napveu F, Ferriere A, Bataille F, Solar Energy 83 (2009) 81-89
[6] Ahmadi M.H, Sayyaadi H, Dehghani S, Hosseinzade H, Energy Conversion and Management 75 (2013).
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