HYBRID MODELLING AND SUPERVISORY SWITCHING CONTROL OF COMPLETE OIL CYCLE OF A SOLAR POWER PLANT

M.J. Zeini Jahromi,∗ M. Eghtesad,∗ and M. Yaghoubi∗

Keywords

Solar power plant, hybrid systems, hybrid modelling, supervisory switching control Nomenclature Af Area of the oil section (m2 ) Am Area of the pipe metal (m2 ) C Specific heat capacity (J/kg ◦ C) Di Heat exchanger tube inner diameter (m) DO Heat exchanger tube outer diameter (m) G Aperture of a collector mirror module (m) P Perimeter of the tank (m) T Temperature (◦ C) Ta Ambient temperature (◦ C) Tin Collector’s field inlet oil temperature (◦ C) Tout Collector’s field outlet oi

Abstract

To improve solar power plant performance, it is essential to study modelling and control of its complete oil cycle. According to various environmental conditions, external disturbances and design con- straints among some components, changes of working loops become necessary which cause switching in the continuous systems. For efficient modelling of this multi-loop oil cycle, a new category of hybrid systems called “switched dynamical systems is used. Be- cause of switching nature of the oil cycle, a conventional continuous controller cannot satisfy all design specifications for these different situations all together. So the model is combined with another type of hybrid systems called “switched controller systems in which all switching decisions are governed by a supervisory switching con- troller; it uses PID controller as its basic controller. Combination of continuous and switching controllers is also a hybrid system. Simulation results for Shiraz solar power plant oil cycle show that switching control of this multi-loop plant can efficiently regulate the oil cycle response in different situations especially in the presence of large step disturbances (moving clouds) and white noise.

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