Analysis of a solar dish–Stirling system with hybridization and thermal storage

A high potential of thermosolar power generation systems is the use of thermal storage and/or hybridization to overcome dependability of solar resource availability. The incorporation of these technologies can be of special interest for isolated units intended for distributed generation systems. Among the thermosolar systems, dish–Stirling technology is the one with more possibilities to be used as a system to feed power independently, i.e., due to the modularity of the units that range between 3 and 25 kWe, depending on the supplier. Thus, the present analysis is focused on studying integration of both hybridization and thermal storage in an isolated unit of 10 kWe dish–Stirling. In particular, hybridization will enable a more continuous operation of the system. Hybridization is analyzed both for a conventional fuel, such as natural gas, and for a renewable energy source, biogas. Analysis of performance of the dish–Stirling system enables to determine the interest of introducing the complementary technologies referred above. Regarding the specific case evaluated in this paper, analyzed data show that hybridization has an advantage that depends on the nature of fuel used, being of 20 % for natural gas and 112 % for biogas in relation to output power of solar-only operation. Thermal energy storage system shows no significant benefits when implemented to a variable power system.