Comparison of Various Solar Radiation
Data Sources for Feasibility Study
of Parabolic Trough Collector Power
Plant in Assam
Pinku Kumar Goswami, Nabajit Dev Choudhury and Rupam Kataki
Abstract In the present study, an attempt was made to analyze the effect of DNI
on the output of 50 MW parabolic trough collector (PTC) based concentrated solar
power (CSP) system for Karbi Anglong district of Assam. The selection of location
was mainly done on the basis of the most number of unelectrified villages available.
Five different satellite derived data sources were used to collect the monthly average
daily global horizontal irradiation, diffuse irradiation (DI), direct normal irradiation,
and other meteorological parameters. These data were further converted to hourly
values using PVSyst software and finally to the Typical Meteorological Year (TMY)
format files. These TMY files were used to estimate the annual electricity production
using System Advisor Model (SAM) and finally levelized cost of electricity (LCOE)
production was determined. It was observed that variation of annual electricity pro-
duction from 90 to 119 GWh and therefore LCOE varies from Rs. 9.56/kWh to Rs.
12.55/kWh.
Keywords Global horizontal irradiation (GHI) · Direct normal irradiation (DNI) ·
Parabolic trough collector (PTC) · PVSyst · System advisor model (SAM)
Nomenclature
a Empirical constant (dimensionless)
b Empirical constant (dimensionless)
I Solar irradiation (kWh/m
2
/day)
r Hourly to daily solar radiation (dimensionless)
P. K. Goswami · N. D. Choudhury (B )
Department of Energy Engineering, Assam Science and Technology University,
Guwahati 781013, India
e-mail: nabajit.astu2017@gmail.com
R. Kataki
Department of Energy, Tezpur University, Tezpur 784028, India
© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020
B. B. Biswal et al. (eds.), Advances in Mechanical Engineering, Lecture Notes in
Mechanical Engineering, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-0124-1_126
1437