Investigation and optimization of a solar-assisted pumped thermal energy storage system with flat plate collectors

Highlights: • A solar-assisted pumped storage system with flat plate collectors is studied. • The novelty is based on the use of the solar thermal field for boosting the heat pump. • The solar-assisted system is compared in detail with an ambient source system. • The global optimum system presents a 68.48% power to power recovery ratio. • The simple payback period is around 7.8 years with 150 m² collecting area. The objective of this work is the investigation of a solar-assisted pumped thermal energy storage system. The examined unit includes a solar field with flat plate collectors, a high-temperature heat pump, a latent storage system and an organic Rankine cycle. This system is fed by electricity from any renewable energy source (e.g., wind turbines or photovoltaic panels), and so the compressor of the heat pump is driven. The heat pump is fed with low-temperature heat from flat plate collectors, and it rejects heat of medium temperature to a latent storage system. The next step is exploiting the stored heat from an organic Rankine cycle for power production when there is a need for using electricity. The studied system is a "heat and power to power" system and can lead to high power recovery ratios. The analysis was conducted with a developed mathematical program in Engineering Equation Solver, and it was validated with numerical results from the literature. The optimum storage temperature has been found at 150 °C and the optimum temperature in the evaporator of the heat pump at 75 °C. In this case, the electricity recovery ratio (or power to power ratio) is found at 68.48%, the organic Rankine cycle efficiency at 18.45%, and the heat pump coefficient of performance at 3.704, while the collecting area is 150 m². The use of a similar system without solar collectors but with the ambient as the heat source leads only to a 32.14% power recovery ratio. So, the specific gain of the used collecting area is 35.17 W/m² which is an important amount of electricity. In the global optimum case, the simple payback period of the solar field investment is found to be at 7.8 years, which is a reasonable value and proves the financial viability of the examined idea. Moreover, this work proves that providing heat input of a relatively high temperature in the heat pump of the pumped thermal energy storage system is an excellent choice for recovering higher amounts of electricity.