Number of Thermal Cycles Estimated for the 10 MWatt Pilot Plant over Its 30 Year Lifetime

摘要

In the 30 year design life of the 10 MW Solar Thermal Pilot Plant nearly 22000 hours of partly cloudy conditions are estimated to occur during daylight plant operating hours. During these partly cloudy hours the plant will experience varying numbers of thermal cycles, depending on the type of clouds. A quantitative extrapolation procedure is provided in this report to convert the number of thermal cycles counted during 8 typical partly cloudy operating scenarios into the number of cycles expected in the design life of the plant. (ERA citation 09:037455)