Stochastic optimal planning of solar thermal power

Abstract

This paper describes the planning of the operation of a concentrated solar power plant under the assumption that the produced electricity is sold on the spot market. By using nonlinear stochastic optimization, the uncertainty of the irradiation forecast is considered. Real data is used to compare the performance of stochastic optimization of affine policies and of single decision trajectories as well as conventional deterministic optimization. It is shown that the stochastic optimization has the potential to better exploit the system's energy storage and thus achieves higher performance for energy time-shifting.