ISCC Improvements and Challenges

ISCC, Integrated Solar Combined Cycle, is a new concept based on integration of two known technologies: first, the classical technology combined cycle, formed by a Brayton cycle with one or several gas turbines and a Rankine cycle producing electricity through a water-steam cycle; an second, the most recently creation technology of Concentrating Solar Power with parabolic trough technology.

There is no any new concept into the integration of both technologies to create the ISCC installation. But the key concept is specially focused on the integration of the solar steam into the HRSGs of the combined cycle. Always it could exist the possibility of a simple addition of solar steam with HRSG's steam at the inlet of the steam turbine cycle. But this is not the optimized design philosophy of an ISCC. Every installation has its own optimized configuration to inject the solar steam into an internal part of the HRSG, and it depends on several factors: power ratio between solar field and combined cycle, owner's or legal requeriments for annual solar electricity output production, steam temperature and pressure of Rankine cycle in CC part, new design concept or introduction of a solar field in an existing combined cycle, etc.

There are some figures about reduction of fuel consumption and pictures of the projects that Abener has developed in the North Africa area. Ain Beni Mathar project in Morocco (450 MWe CC + 25 MWe Solar field) has been tested and completed in last September 2010 as the first ISCC installation in the world, and Hassi R'Mel Algerian project (150 MWe CC + 25 MWe Solar field) is being started-up in the 2011 Spring to be completed before 2011 Summer.

Finally, some future challenges and conclusions are introduced to increase the possibilities of mixing between conventional installations and solar applications.