Real-Time Simulation of CESA-I Central Receiver Solar Thermal Power Plant
Javier Bonilla, Lidia Caros Roca, Luis J. Yebra, S. Dormido · Linköping electronic conference proceedings · 2009
This paper presents a real-time heliostat field simulator, based on a hybrid model, using Modelica as the modelling language. The development of industrial dynamic simulators, in this work for a central receiver solar thermal power plant: CESA-I from CIEMAT-PSA, is mainly aimed as a tool for the enhancement of advanced control algorithms but it is also useful for training purposes. The developed real-time heliostat field simulator is basically the union of the hybrid heliostat field model and a wrapped model which handles the real-time simulation and communication issues between the heliostat field simulator and HelFiCo (Heliostat Field Control) software which is in charge of manipulating and controlling the heliostat field according to an automatic control strategy. The real-time heliostat field simulator provides a virtual system, with the same response as the real plant.