Exergy, energy, and exergoeconomic assessments of a solar-based novel power generation system using helium Brayton cycle

This study presents a novel solar power tower (SPT)-based power plant integrating a helium Brayton cycle (HBC) as the topping cycle and a recuperative organic Rankine cycle as waste heat recovery cycle. Energy, exergy, and exergoeconomic analyses were performed numerically. Results demonstrate that the proposed system achieved improvements of 19.86% in energy efficiency and 19.85% in exergy efficiency, however, at a 9.41% increase in overall plant cost compared to the conventional SPT-HBC configuration. Therefore, the proposed system achieved energy and exergy efficiencies of 34.45% and 36.89%, respectively, and a levelised cost of electricity of 43.23 $/MWh.