For constructing a Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) plant, water resource is an important factor that should be considered by designers and developers. As a potential site for the large-scale deployment of a CSP plant, the water requirements of the CSP plant in western China have been studied using the System Advisor Model (SAM) software. The results of the comparative analyses show that dry cooling is a good choice for the CSP plant to be reducing the water consumption. Taking a 50 MW CSP plant with 7.5 full load storage hours as an example, a CSP plant with dry cooling only needs a water intensity of 0.293 m'/MWh, which is about 12 times lower than the wet cooling CSP with a water intensity of 3.505 m~3/MWh. Furthermore, among these influencing factors, electric power output is the key point for the water requirement, while dry bulb temperature is the key for the parasitic energy requirement in western China, due to the alpine region.
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