Object oriented modelling of the CSP-DSW facility

The acausal and object-oriented language Modelica was chosen to develop the overall system-level model of the Cyprus Institute’s Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) and Desalination of Sea Water (DSW) proof-of-concept at the Platform for Research, Observation, and Technological Applications in Solar Energy (PROTEAS) facility in Cyprus. This model builds upon the system level and component models that are part of SolarTherm, an open-source Modelica library of concentrating solar thermal components, developed as part of the Australian Solar Thermal Research Initiative (ASTRI). The article describes the practical ad-hoc approaches used in modelling the components of the CSP-DSW in detail, explaining the reasons for their selection, their advantages and limitations. Two experiments conducted at PROTEAS in July 2016 and January 2018 were used to validate the model. Those experiments were simulated using the developed Modelica model. The comparison between the model’s estimates and the test measurements produce a relatively good agreement, particularly in steady state. In addition to presenting the results, the article discusses the lessons learned from this experimental comparison regarding the quality of the model, how to improve it, and what additional tests to perform to fully validate it.