Development of a flexible tool for the integrated techno-economic assessment of renewable desalination plants

A number of simulation tools have been implemented in the past to assess the techno-economic feasibility of renewable power plants or desalination units. However, to the best of our knowledge, no well-established tool currently exists for the simulation of integrated renewable desalination plants on a system analysis level. This paper presents an innovative integrated methodology for the techno-economic assessment of renewable desalination plants. The technical assessment is performed within the simulation platform INSEL, whereas the existing model library - mainly consisting on photovoltaics (PV) and wind power - has been considerably extended by own developments. The newly implemented modules include a series of models for concentrating solar power (CSP) technologies such as Parabolic Trough, linear Fresnel and Central Receiver. In addition, models for thermal desalination such as MED and MED-TVC as well as for RO have been implemented. The technical model is typically used to perform annual yield analyses. The time step used for the input data such as meteorological data and demand data is of one hour. In a successive step the main results of the technical model are used as input for a flexible economic model, which has been developed as well within the context of this work. In the second part of the paper the developed methodology is applied within two exemplarily case studies in MarsaAlam, a touristic location in Egypt. In the first case study, several CSP technologies and configurations are compared. The second case study focuses on the optimization of the combined supply of desalinated water and electrical power.