Heliyon (Mar 2023)
Feasibility analysis of coexistence between plantation and tower concentrating solar system
Abstract
There are large-scale thermal utilization needs in rural and urban fringes in China that can provide many employment opportunities. However, due to the limited use of small and medium-sized coal-fired boilers, thermal energy is actually in short supply. If embedding these spaces including plantations with solar heliostat fields, a large number of nodes for cheap thermal energy supply can be obtained through solar energy, which can create more small-scale industrial and commercial employment opportunities near user side. However, to ensure the crop harvest, plantations are often prohibited from being used for other purposes. In order to verify the idea of coexistence between tower concentrating solar system with sparse heliostat field and plantation, the clean-sky model was used to analyze the shading rate of the heliostat to the ground in each month and the proportion of the area with a relative sunshine duration of less than 80% for the heliostat fields at low, middle, and high latitude areas, and further gave the correction of the above analysis results using typical meteorological year conditions. The results show that heliostats in mid latitude area have obvious adverse effects on overwintering crops. In high latitude area, although the heliostats are more severely blocked in the cold season, there is no planting activity in this season, so the impact on planting can be ignored. The shade ratio of the heliostats to the ground in low, middle and high latitude regions is tolerable in the months suitable for planting, and shade-tolerant crops can also be interplanted in the shaded area to enrich the variety structure. Therefore, by embedding the tower concentrating solar system with a sparse heliostat field, the plantation can meet the two functions of planting and thermal energy supply at the same time to further increase its income.
